University of Nanking - Linguist Yearbook (Nanking, China)

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THE OLD INDUSTRIAL ORDER AND Tl-IE NEW 43 THE OLD INDUSTRIAL ORDER AND THE NEW A walk down an ordinary Chinese street gives one a fascinating glimpse of what the industrial life of Mediaeval Europe must have been. Here a tradesman is beating various metals into pots and pansg next door a man is making wooden pails, tubs and other vessels. The silversmith, tinsmith, tailor, cobbler and many other craftsmen in their shops, full width opening on the street, may be seen at work. In addition to their few simple tools one may often see in the same room the cook-- ing stove, the table where the family eats, and even the beds for the 'prentiees behind the counter over which the goods they make are sold. With all their simple equipment they often produce wondrously line wares. As one passes other houses one can hear the crude wooden machinery as it spins the silk or cotton thread, and the clack of the no less rude looms. Nanking is a city world famed for its silk goods, hut one would search in vain for any silk factories. In winter the cloth IS made in the homes where in springthe silkworm is fed on the mulberry leaves stripped from the tree in the back yard. Elsewhere the art of basket making, crockery making, or of some other industry, has been handed down from father to son since a thousand years before the first 'prentice learned his trade in English or Flemish shops. Would that a faithful picture could stop with this picture of primitive home manufacture, that one could tell of a people abundant- ly provided with the necessities of life by the labor of their own hands! The opposite is the case. Population has ever increased, but produc- tion has remained practically at a stantlstillg machinery has never been developed, and workmen have been abundant. The result is that the Qheapest commodity in China is man himself. Here there are mil- llons of people always 011 the verge of starvation. The slightest shift In the nice balance of food production and consumption will precipitate hundred of thousands over the verge, and famine results, as the past few years, bear terrible testimony. In the shops of the tradesmen the hours are long and working conditions frightfully poor. No sadder Sight awaits the eyes of those that come to China than that of man turned into a hopeless beast of burden. Here are a half dozen men hitched to a wagon, bareheaded, stripped to the waist, straining up hill with their terrible load, therea woman staggers by, bowed under a huge burden of fuel, building material or fertilizer. Men wheel huge barrows laden with merchandise, reeling and gasping under theirload. These are not just occasional sights, but are ever before our eyes as We have travelled through city after city. Off the few railways and main waterways all kinds of transporlationis largely by man-power, Whether it be pulling a boat upstream, hauling a cart along the road, Carrying people in chairs, or pulling them in rickshas. Human labor is the cheapest and most abundant article in China, and therefore for the world's markets the most valuable. Now that distances are less' significant Chinese labor is a- great gold' mineg here IS an exhaustless supply of exploitable labor, used to working- under unsanitary conditions, ordinarily too ignorant to organize, effectually driven by the danger of starvation to take what wages can be gotten,

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42 Tl-Ili LINGUIST power of the family is still paramount, and until the people can learnlto transcend its limits and look to the welfaregof all, they cannot hopte to enjoy such advantages as we take for granted. 'Another serious bar to social' unity and' cooperation is the still prevailing system of class distinctions. This system has not become as fixed and rigid as the caste system in India, nevertheless society is pretty clearly divided into three distinct classes-- upper, to which belong the teachers and officialsg middle, to which belong the mer- chants andthe artisans 5 and tlielower. or coolie class. While theoreti- cally it is quite possible to rise from a lower to a higher class, practi- cally there are many grave, almost unsurmountable, difficulties in the wav. Between these classes there is not a great deal of intercourse, and less cooperation. It is not surprising that the lack of national unity is felt every- where- in the language, in the monetary system in inter-provincial relationships. The dialect of one community is almost unintelligible in another only a hundred miles awayn Money good in this province is discounted in the next. One section may be at war with another, and the rest of the country neither know nor care about it. Thus we see China today. divided and hampered by almost uncon- querable prejudices. The Chinese have always been great wall builders. and today walls, literal and figurative, confront us on every hand. There are walls around houses, schools, temples 3 walls around the parks and walls around the cities, each excluding the rest of man- kind from the one little unit around which it is built. At one time the nation attempted to build a wall which would shut out its trouble- some neighbors. But even as the Great Wall, that colossal monument to Chinese industry, skill and engineering. has proven futile and fallen short of its purpose, so we may hope to see the various walls which separate each from his neighbor prove useless and ineffective. Until that happens it will be impossible for China to become a strong and united' nation,and to take its place among the nations of the world. The task of breaking down these hampering walls is indeed a great adventure. It will be a long, slow process which will demand patience, perseverance and wisdomg the customs and superstitious of three or four thousand years cannot be eradicated in a generation. But those who can love men, and believe in God. can have their part in this great adventure, and they, in time, will be privileged to see it succeed. l R. F. lung , J er: I X Qi X ' Z z' 'J at ' 4. s ff W- . . g ,. W fig! .1 :Lv , , Q yr 4' K

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44 H THE LINGUIST 'i Westerners and Orientals alike are busy exploiting this mine of labor. Already the great chimneys of giant factories have appeared on China's skyline. Canton, Shanghai, Tientsin and many other centers are rapidly developing great manufacturing industries. Not only does China offer an unlimited supply of cheap labor, but in the future will also produce an exhaustless supply of raw material. With her four hundred millions of population rapidly developing a demand for all kinds of manufactured articles, from mechanical toys to railway locomotives there is tooa market that offers boundless possibilities. Truly a field to delight the unscrupulous manufacturer, where incon- venient minimum wage laws, child-labor laws, accident compensation and other factory laws are unknown ! ' The results are almost too pitiful for words. Dr. Eddy recently found that the usual hours of labor per day are twelve or more, with night shifts.' Many factories work their hands far beyond twelve hours a day. Usually there is no rest on Sunday, but the grind goes on until the human machine breaks down and is cast on the scrap heap of derelict humanity that abounds in every oriental city. Dr. Eddy found thousands of boys and girls, of from seven to fifteen years of age, at work in factories: they get only a pittance for their work, from six to fifteen cents a day. Women, with babies strapped to their backs orleft to play beside the machines, labor all night in the ill lighted buildings. Even men get but thirty cents a day and skilled labor only from forty to sixty cents. When it is remembered that these figures are in the Mexican dollar, which is about half of an American dollar, one sees how shockingly low the wages are. They are low even for Oriental standards. A description -of working conditions fills one with indignation. Boys working in match factories are compelled to use a cheap grade of phosphorus which causes a decay of the bones of the face. In the silk factories little children, manipulating the cocoons in scalding water suffered from steamed eyes, but were not protected in any way. No attention is paid to the moral conditions of women and girls in the crowded factories. It is totally impossible for the workers to provide decent. living quarters on the low wages, and as a result they live in crowded hovels unfit for animalsto herd in. Unguarded machinery leads to permanent crippling of child workers, but no provision is made for compensation for these cripples. Manufacturers excuse themselves by saying that they must compete with the cheap products of the home manufacture with their long hours and bad working conditions, and sadly enough there is some truth in what they say. And in justice it must be added that there are factories which offer exceptions to the conditions noted above. Little wonder that recently there were fifty-two strikes in Canton and thereabouts in nine monthsz. The old labor guilds are being 1. Sherwood Eddy: The Social Gospel in Chinn.the Chinese Recorder, Feb. 1923. 2, The Living Age, May 6, 1922,