However we may have failed in our aim, the purpose of the book is to win sympathy for the toiling masses in the new world of labor. No student, no business man, certainly no true citizen or patriot, or professing Christian; no idealist or realist concerned with the conditions or needs of his fellow men can be indifferent to the crucial problem which confronts us in this world of labor. It is one of the four major problems of our time-the industrial problem, the international problem, the interracial problem, and underlying all these, the question of whether there is a moral dynamic and spiritual principle and power adequate for a solution of these problems, or whether men must turn to a materialistic interpretation of life as in Russia today— these are the great issues of our time. For more than a year during this tour we have seen these men in the factory or the home in all lands doing the world's work. We have no words fine enough to state their case. As we have sat with them on the floor of their poverty-stricken homes in China, Japan or India, as we have observed their titanic struggle against terrific odds in war, revolution, hunger and famine in Russia, as we have followed their long fight against low wages, long hours or adverse conditions, in many lands, in the crowded factory or the city slum, again and again the words of Robert Louis Stevenson have recurred to us on this journey: "In the slums of cities, moving amongst indifferent millions, to mechanical employments, without hope of change in the future, with scarce a pleasure in the present, and yet true to his virtues, honest up to his lights, kind to his neighbors, tempted perhaps in vain by the bright gin palace often repaying the world's scorn with service, often standing firm upon a scruple everywhere some virtue. cherished or affected, everywhere some decency of thought and courage, everywhere the ensign of man's ineffectual goodness-ah! if I could show you this! If I could show you these men and women all the world over, in every stage of history, under every abuse of error, under every circumstance of failure, without hope, without help, without thanks, still obscurely fighting the lost fight of virtue, still clinging to some rag of honor, the poor jewel of their souls." New York, October 8, 1923. THE NEW WORLD CHAPTER I INDUSTRIAL CHINA ASIA is now in the beginning of a great industrial revolution. Such an industrial revolution in the middle of the eighteenth century, from 1760 to 1832, gradually transformed rural England into a manufacturing country. the nineteenth century it extended over Europe and America. In the twentieth century it has entered the Orient as a terrific invasion. In the continent of Asia there are some five hundred and seventy millions gainfully employed in cheap labor, more than twice the number in Europe and America combined. At present they are engaged principally in agriculture and home industries, but India, China and Japan are now being rapidly industrialized. Are they to become the sweatshop of the world, exploiting their own toiling populations and menacing the standard of living in the West? Or can Asia, avoiding generations of oppression, injustice and conflict, introduce international industrial standards for the protection of the New World of Labor? According to the Government Bureau of Economic Information, China has 295,000,000 workers gainfully employed, the largest number of any country in the world, or more than seven times the working force in the United |