As Shanghai tackles the situation now confronting it, the importance of dealing promptly and effectively with the refugee problem has been recognized. Recognition does not carry solution, for the complicating factors are many. It is vital to appreciate them; otherwise action or inaction may make matters worse. Roughly there are about 126,000 unemployed and destitute people in the various camps. Sustenance is being arranged for them and it is estimated that funds may permit their support on the barest margin for six months. About 600,000 persons in some way or another, are living on the individual generosity of friends, or kindly citizens whose economic resources are already strained and who consequently cannot be expected to dispense this private charity for an indefinite period. Indeed, in a very short time many of these charitably-minded folk will themselves become destitute or, at any rate, in sore straits. The severity of the distress has been revealed by a census taken in the French Concession where it has been computed that 4,800 people are actually sleeping out in the streets without any means of subsistence. The figures for the International Settlement have not been ascertained.
They probably would reach a total of something like 8,000. The normal industrial population at work in the Settlement is 185,000—that is to say in factories and workshops alone and leaving out of account persons engaged in commerce and trade. Thanks to the recent cessation of fighting, factories and workshops in the Western and Northern districts have made a gradual, but definite, return to activity. There are about 50,000 workers again in employment, Reports show that the figure is mounting but the pace must be painfully slow. So, apart from other forms of labour, there are about 135,000 industrial hands out of work. Their power of resistance to the economic strain of unemployment and rising prices is daily being reduced.
Undoubtedly the chief means of easing the situation is to be found in the repatriation of refugees from districts, especially the peasants and farmers who were formerly in the areas over which the tide of battle has rolled. The various organizations responsible for evacuation have already done much. They cannot proceed as rapidly as they would like because of the war conditions prevailing outside. If only the former inhabitants of what is known as the Pootung area could be induced to return to their villages a double service would be rendered. They would thus cease to be a burden on Shanghai and they would themselves assist in relieving Shanghai's difficulties by resuming the cultivation of crops and so, easing the food situation. The Japanese authorities are aware of this requirement and it is mainly to them that the organizations must look for assistance in stimulating repatriation. Fear of guerrilla warfare springing up in the occupied territory is understood to be obsessing the Japanese command. It is natural, but actually those who know the mentality of the
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.