fellows obliged to work for Chinese employers not yet fully acquainted with the economics of seeing that their people work in good surroundings. They form a contrast indeed with the poor wretched starvelings who work in dingy hovels, unconscionably long hours, supplied with the most primitive of sanitary arrangements, underpaid and generally giving ample testi-many of the shortcomings of their employers. Recent events, some of them most tragic, have shown how buildings have been diverted from their originally intended pur-ose to house small factories where Rot the slightest regard has been paid to the safety of the workers or even their need for a minimum of light arid air in which to carry on their business. Safeguards against injury from machinery are more often conspicuous by their absence than otherwise and generally, conditions are such that no foreign employer with the slightest remnants of a conscience, or an eye to economic efficiency would allow to endure for a moment.
Consider for a moment this picture of the li areas as seen by a representative of the "North-China Daily News" and published last September in these pages. Thus a silk filature:—
Into the grimy, steamy, upstairs: and-down precincts of a half wooden, half brick structure used as a fature, the inquiring visitor may plunge to find a long row of women and children engaged in winding cocoons. The women do the winding, the children the unravelling through the medium of boiling water the effects of which are apparent on the poor ttle pinkened fingers of the tiny workers. 'The atmosphere is ap: palling, the general deadness the expressions all' round makes it difficult to associate the Sad pictures, are they not? And yet demonstrably true in the Settlements or without, demonstr~ ably characteristic of the manner in which some Chinese capitalists, an alarmingly large proportion, have tender regard for the people working for them, It is true that foreigners may to some extent be blamed for allowing such conditions to exist within their jurisdic tion, because more Is to be expect= ed of them than from others, but the immediate responsibility is the employers who find it profitable to perpetuate such deplorable cir~ cumstances.
It is an old saying that when tone has a bad case the best defence is to blackguard one's opponent. Mr. An Fu-ting seems to have spared no pains in doing this. After blaming the foreign capita-Uists for not considering the welfare of their workers, the speaker went on to state that whenever the Chinese Government sought to introduce inspections of labour conditions in Shanghai, foreign employers opposed the move, elting as their sole reason for doing 80 their extraterritorial—privilege The facts are that opposition to the extension of the Chinese factory law arose out of a very natural fear that in its operation discrimination would be applied against the foreign employer. The danger of such a thing is real, as witness the discriminatory legislation concerning foreign undertakings to which attention was drawn in this column but a few weeks ago. There was no guarantee that the law would be applied with the same meticulous care, which was anticipated in the case' of foreign concerns, to Chinese undertakings, and there was consequently the fear that while foreigners would be required to spend. considerable money to meet the demands of the new legislation, Chinese employers would be disturbed as little as possible, and the Chinese employed by his own countrymen little benefitted by the reforms it was sought to introduce. To what extent has reform been achieved in other parts of China where the foreigner does not reside? How much has been done to improve conditions, wretched conditions, under which Chinese workers labour in other parts of 'China? In the answers to those questions will be found the reason for Mr. An's eloquent straining at a gnat, which if it exists so far as the foreigner is concerned, is a very small insect indeed, compared with the imposing animal of China's own creation, Shanghai has suffered a great deal in the past from the adroit dissemination of the half truth, it will probably have to suffer a' great deal more, but this particular instance is typical of what goes on in certain organizations at Geneva, where one tale is good until another is told.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.