In a once fine old house the rooms and" broad stairways have been transformed into. a warren machines to which unauthorised structures have been added for a factory. Here into one room an enormous number of women workers fare crowded. The general impression in nothing like as grim as in the cocoon inferno but the curious medley of machines, furnaces, electric light, dust, benches, bales, odd wooden and rickety stairways, without handrails and. blocked" exits make the observer wonder how it is that tragedies from accidents or fires are not frequently reported.
In_a_ big. cotton mill order and well-marshalled employees with fairly good attention to light and ai show that more reasonable methods ican' gain ground, even if the gress is slow in ensuring that exits are always available for use. What fever has been done has, however, given such obvious satisfaction to years later. Even Kipling learnt that although he wrote, in a different frame of mind from the inspiration of the "Absent-'Minded Beggar," a_ blistering commentary in "The Islandei "Yet ye were saved by a remnant "(and your land's long. suffering star)
'When. your rong men cheered in. their millions, while" your Striplings went to var Sons of the sheltered _city—unmade, unhandled, unmeet—"Ye pushed them' raw to the battle as ye picked them raw from the street...
And ye sent them comfits and pietares'fo'help them harry your oes.
'And_ye vaunted your fathom-ess power and ye flaunted your iron Pee don the re—ye fawned on the Younger Nations. for the men who could shoot and ride "Then ye returned to your trinkets: then' ye contented your With the flannelled fools at the wickets or the muddied oafs at The goal The taunt went home and in 1914 the same poet was able confidently to write:
There is but one task for all—One life for exch to give.
'What stands if freedom 'Who dies if England live'
There Kipling, the Victorian and Coward, the neo-Georgian ivin hands for the theme of "Ca cade" is not inconsistent with that thought. the owner that his sustained interest in reform may be expected. live? Recruited from the country And. where do these workpeople they are, herded in cupboards in crowded "li" houses over each of which rules the sub-contractor who manages their lives for them, The nile pay wages to the contractor and he pays the sub agents. In re~ turn the worker is fed, permitted to go to work and, off duty, allowed to!
on the narrow shelf allotted to her.
The Alternative If she finds this monotony overpowering, she may listen to the blandishments of another agent who will introduce her to the comparaly more spacious life of the singsong quarters, To return to her village, unless a husband is, available, would not be attempted. The loss' of "face" would be too great. Even these hovels are preferable to the innumerable metalworks in odd dens and. lairs where. underfed, undersized boys and men wield hammers and deal with anvils and forges for the manufacture of bolts, screws and the like which the middlemen sell to the big engineering firms, Shanghai is too huge for an hour's adventure to cover everything but let the tale of the glimpse into the domestic residential quarter be told, From time to time as Shanghai grows, enterprising landlords. secking a Sure investment return erected these close packed buildings as dwellings, complete with rooms and id doors suitable for the family. But the family dis that it could buy a machine and work it in this dwelling at a profit, owing to the rapid growth of Shanghai's ink dustrial "demand From one house the process w tended to two, to three, to four, the walls being knocked down and' the Hairways and doors blocked to com= plete the transformation into a sort fefectoy. Ande; n't vast are, Bling "factories" in? which sil ere are simply li-planned etrag" Weaving' nail-manufacture, and_all other 'Kinds of industries' are. ed on with the minimum of super wisfon and in total disregard of the ordinary requirements of" the Realthy? worker and the family and workers reside in the crevices and on lofts, said that, there are over twenty of these "Il" areas thus con: verted to industrial uses and as they ach contain hundreds of houses the problem of their existence is already Tet it be remembered four' travel nothing was met in the slightest degree it Fevant to he lend grind of urn ing out ekeined sil thread, als, cigarettes, rubber shoes, or. what Yourwill." There were glimpses of the workers eating—the better, to endure the fetid atmosphere of the factories~of the workers sleeping—oer tired Iimbe pathetically limp And. appealing as they flecked the darkness of the cupboards!
In this, Shanghai there, ie_no soon" no nigh ite" Tite advent habit of involuntary ne-and no sport, Life
Gulescence. Tt is not even real Garnest, for there seemed to be not the slightest reason. why any "of these entrapped victims should value aumoment of their day excep per= board shelf a ps that fine of oblivion the
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.