The Daily Worker Newspaper, June 11, 1927, Page 8

Maurier Thicker The True Seat of Government Wages and Working Conditions in China (Continued from Page One) eration. In another generation, when the Chinese have gained in industrial skill, things may be other- wise. For the moment, the west is probably feel- ing the results of Japanese competition more than the industrialization of China. Industries which are carried on under the factory system are: cotton spinning and weaving, silk reel- ing and spinning, silk weaving, cigarette making, match making, printing, engincering, electricity, dis- tilling, brewing and aerated water manufacture, tanning, flour milling, rice milling, oil refining, bean pressing for oil and cake, sugar refining, fruit, fish and meat canning, egg preparing, saw-milling, tea curing, hosiery knitting, hair net examining, wool cleaning and press packing, ice and‘cold stor- age works; and the manufacture of soap and candles, cement and bricks, carpets and rugs, towels, biscuits, glass, porcelain and earthenware, paper, eloisonné, lacquer and enamelware. Cotton Mills: General Conditions. As regards-the actual structure of the factories and the arrangements for lighting, ventilation, cleanliness and sanitation, there is little to choose anywhere in China between Chinese, Japanese and British mills. A Chinese mill built in 1924 is better than a British mill built in 1910 and a British mill built in 1924 is better than a Chinese mill built in 1910. The same applies to Japanese. Date is more or less the governing factor, as far as I could see from visiting a number of mills of different nationalities. The textile machinery is either sup- plied from England, from such well-known firms as Asa Lees of Oldham, or from America; and the lay- out is not very different from the lay-out of mills in Lancashire, except that the rows of spindles are very much lower, so as to suit the height of the small children who so often tend them. I have heard it said that when New England introduced law abol- ishing child labor, the low child-size machinery which did not go to the Southern States of America was exported to China. It is said that one of the mills of Naigai Wata Kaisha Cotton Spinning and Weav- ing Co. in Shanghai is the most up-to-date cotton mill in China and I do not think that anyone has ever disputed this claim. The cotton-spinning and weaving industry is car- ried on largely by the labor of women and children. I have seen it estimated that of all the cotton work- ers 40 per cent are women, 40 per cent children, and 20 per cent men. I can scarcely, however, re- call seeing anyymen employed in the mills which I I visited, except as foremen and as engine-men in the power house. My general impression was that this is a women’s and children’s industry. Standard of Life. At the present time the life of the mass of the Chinese is extraordinarily poor. The peasant farm- ing families who constitute nearly three-quarters of the population of China are said to spend 55 per cent of their earnings on food; the coolies in the towns about 75 per cent. I have seen the workers in the cotton mills partaking of their midday meal, a small bowl of rice or bean or millet. And the industrial workers are in general not worse paid than the coolies, afford; and the cost of this food is so great that it runs away with anything up to nearly three-quarters of their earnings, and leaves little over for anything else—so little, indeed, that quite clearly their wives and children are forced to work if the family is to live at all, even at their low standard, Yet this is all that they can. It is generally admitted that the wage of the father of the family is not sufficient to keep the family. Both foreign and Chinese factory owners represent that, because of this, the employment of women and children, and especially, of children, is in the nature of a charity. It does not seem to have occurred to anyone that another solution would be to make the man’s wage adequate for the mainten- ance of the family. Very little attention has so far been paid to the lives of the Chinese workers and very little evidence has been collected. Some slender information, how- ever, exists regarding Shanghai, the commercial and industrial capital of China, which is at the same time an International Settlement, in the government of which Great Britain overwhelmingly predomin- ates. Housing. Nothing could be more miserable than the housing conditions of the factory workers in China. I visited a number of workers’ dwellings in proximity to the cotton mills at Shanghai, Hankow and Wuchang. Many of the two-storeyed houses front on dark streets, so narrow that hardly a ricksha could pass, even if the piles of garbage were cleared away. In Shanghai the rent of a four-roomed house was $13 to $20 per month. This is frequently paid by the man who owns the front room on the ground floor and probably works in it. The other “rooms,” which often consist of rough wooden partitions made out of old packing cases—(and if there is any wall- paper, it is just Chinese newspapers pasted on)— are sub-let at about $5 per month. A room, 10-ft. by 12-ft. which I saw, housed two families. But a back partition with two mere families only cost $4 per month, as there was no window. In the rooms’ were two wooden beds—-crude home-made affairs, little more’ than raised planks, about 5-ft. wide, covered with a torn and dirty piece -of matting. In one I did see a real bed. The only other furni- ture was an open brick brazier—there was no fire- place—and some old clothes hung on a nail. These dwellings were just outside two cotton mills, where the average wagé of the cotton mill hands who in- habited them is given as $12 per month. Probably the wife and children were also wage-earners, other- wise one-sixth of the wage would go in rent, even if the workers shared with another family the worst kind of room with no window. There was generally a water supply from a tap in each street, similar to the village pump in our old-fashioned villages, but no evidence of any sani- tary arrangements, and refuse was just thrown into the street. In Shanghai, I was told that some work- ers pay a rental of 10 cents per month for a plank in a room with thirty other workers. IN WALL STREET Here éripifen rise and fall, here wars are made, And in their chairs the bankers, gray and staid, Here daily plan, as’ calmly as can be, The destinies of man, from ten to three! —HENRY REICH, JR. eo aa Tt is possible that replicas of some of these filthy grimy brick or stone dwellings could be found in parts of East London or Glasgow. But a great num- ber of workers in China live in mere huts, grouped near the mills or factories on any waste ground available. This I.saw both at Shanghai and Hankow. Some that I saw at Shanghai were just outside the Ewo Cotton Mills, owned by one of the two largest British firms out East. They consist of low huts with not more than 5-ft. head room, made of bam- boo poles stuck into the ground and covered with mud plaster. The police frequently come and bury these houses down, as being too insanitary; but they are soon rebuilt. At other times, except in periods of drought, winds and heavy rains often carry. off the roof or wash away the whole house. These huts consist of just one room, containing a bare mat or two to sleep on, a brick oven, bowls and sometimes a broken chair or table. The surrounding stench was almost overpowering. There was stagnant wa- ' ter and, of course, no drainage system or sanita- tion. Skin diseases appeared to be very prevalent. The following ‘is another description furnished by a Chinese Y. M. C. A. investigator, of one of these huts, of which there are now apparently many thous- ands in various parts of Shanghai, built of bamboo, mud, lime and straw: “The house with six inmates, father, mother and four children, occupied a space of about 10-ft. by 14-ft. The roof, built of bamboo matting and straw, now in a dilapidated state, lined underneath with soot and cobwebs, lets in water even in a shower. The walls, riddled with holes, are caving in and afford no privacy and no protection against cold and storm. There is no flooring, everything rests on an uneven mud floor. There is no drainage and no lavatory. The house is surrounded by garbage heaps and cesspools. One’s throat becomes inflamed in this neighborhood in ten minutes. On rainy days water contaminated by refuse and manure enters and floods the house to a depth of several inches. After a storm the author has seen the inmates: mov- ing about in water and mud up to the knees and little children covered with filth confined to the spaces on beds and chairs. In this place which they called home is to be found their living room, bed- room, kitchen and bathroom all in one. In this par- tieular working. community there are nearly 400 such ‘homes’.” Some of the mill owners, notably the Japanese Naigai Wata Kaisha Cotton Spinning and Weaving Company, Ltd., have built special quarters to be rented by their workers and their families at a low rental. This is, of course, an immense advance on a mud hut; but from what I have seen elsewhere, I doubt whether employes in Japanese mills and other factories are not practically prisoners housed in a compound. I will conelude this section on housing in the mod- ernized industrial, cities of China, by quoting Mr. Thomen Tchou, Director of the Shanghai Benevolent Industrial Institution. Mr. Tchou has recently con- ducted an enquiry, a report of which is published by the International Labor Office, into the problem of China’s modern slums, the slums into which are crowded the Chinese workers, drawn into the great industrialized foreign Treaty Ports, as our own workers were drawn into the factory towns of Lan- eashire at the time of the Industrial Revolution. Mr. Tchou says that these slums, which have grown up recently around Shanghai’s great new Western factories, are so horrible that “their equal has never been seen in the Western world, nor in China in past generations, except in abnormal times of famines, floods, and similar calamities.” Drawing by William Gropper