Foreign Firms Asked to Provide Them for Employees 1 From Our Owx Connesrosoex?
Hankow, Sept, 25.
Having done its best to force the missions to close down the primary schools which they have Been conducting for many years without a farthing's cost to the Authorities, the Hankow Board of Education has now formulated scheme under which every forei firm employing more than forty workers. is to start a school for] them, "the motive of the scheme is to secure the education of the workers a0 that they may take an national affairs, It entirely ignores twe {Questions which would have to be faced by any firm before agreeing to the scheme, 'The first is that' the foreign firms are not in 2 position to supervise the instruction given to their workpeople if achers Selected by the local authorities are placed in control of the schools. A firm might easily discover that it had been paying the cost of a series of anti-capitalistic and anti-Smperialiatic lessons for its employees Such " subjects certainly be introduced if the text-Books now authorized for use in day-schools were taught. Even.
books prepared for use in the People's Schools" deal with the unequal treaties, though the money used in that work is largely drawn from foreign sources, The second difficulty is the old one about the horse and the water. There is not the slightest evidence that the workers wish to be taught, Of course, if the school hours are arranged during the regular working hours and paid for at union rates, the workers might be induced to attend in a body, but what hope is there that men and women will sacrifice their own leisure in order to attend these schools? If an me spector came round and fount that the workers are not attending, who would get the blame for this failure fof the scheme? These men and women will naturally ask why the authorities, who donot insist on, or provide for, th sation of all, children of school age, should sud. denly display an interest in the education of those adults who work foreign firms.
'A. Sapanese Objection Of the American firms in t port there is probably only one which. would come under the scheme, and it is already doing fas mutch as can be expected for its workpeople, A definite request has been made that the Japanese Weaving Mill shall comply with the orders, but the Japanese attitude is understood to be that the provision of educational and cro tonal facilities for their work-era is entirely a matter for the west of the city. To-day refugees Gecision of the mill-owners, They are regard the compulsory education of the workers as a matter for the Chinese authorities to attend to.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.