claimed to represent over 300,000 workers from some 200 unions. Here the unions pledged one another their financial support in case of strikes; agreed to stand for a final eight-hour day, determined that the movement should be economic rather than political in character, and decided to form a permanent National Federation of Labor. The mass of labor in China is uneducated, illiterate and easily led. Some 200,000 factory workers are now organized in the industrial cities and about 185,000 miners and railway men. In most of the trades the old craft guilds are still strong while the trade union movement is weak or unorganized.

The striking miners of the Kailan Mining Administration thus state their case: "The Administration holds us down with great severity, just as if we were brigands. In respect to our dangerous work in the mines, we are treated with less consideration than a horse or a mule. . . . If a horse or a mule is killed the Administration is out one or two hundred dollars, but if a man is killed the Administration does not pay his family even fifty dollars. When a worker is injured he is taken out and discarded without regard to whether he lives or dies afterwards. But if a horse is injured while in charge of a worker, the worker is fined by the Administration. The life of the worker is considered as of no value. We workers in the mines going down into the bowels of the earth are as if in hell itself. We are now possessed of the firm purpose to better our condition. We shall not stop in our efforts though it cost us our lives."

A labor leader in Shanghai thus states the contention of his fellow-workers: "The occasion for all these strikes lies in the general injustice of wages and conditions in industry today. Laborers in Shanghai are working at least ten hours a day, some fourteen hours and a few sixteen hours a day. As for boys there are many instances of wages of

$1.50 to $2.50 per month being paid. It is useless for the employers to get the police to suppress our organizations and close our headquarters. The spirit still remains and will break out in a strike. The only thing that will settle the struggle is a conference." Unfortunately conference between employer and employees is still denied to labor in some parts of China.

In some places we found detectives employed to arrest the leaders under false charges and prevent labor's effective organization. They were being so hunted by the police in one city that it was difficult for us even to find the leaders. Such a policy will bring its own retribution as in other countries. Many of the evils in the West are due to a misguided industrial revolution. The people today are suffering from the exploitation of the workers in the last generation. The frank recognition of labor's right to organize, to conferences between workers and employers, to workers' education, reasonable wages, hours and conditions in China today would save her from possible violence and bloodshed. It is sad if history is read to no purpose and if the Orient must go on repeating the blind and selfish mistakes of the misguided Occident. When will East and West alike learn that justice and nothing less than justice will meet the situation in the new world of labor?

Labor in China as in Japan is drifting into radicalism. If you do not give men justice they finally rise in fury to take more than justice; if you do not allow evolution, you force them to revolution. It is the old alternative between the British open safety valve of liberty and the Czarist method of repression which finally results in a vast volcanic upheaval of hatred and destruction.

China's socialism dates from her great socialist philosopher and statesman, Wang An Shih of 1021 A. D., before the time of the Norman Conquest or the Magna Charta of

England. His state socialism was tolerantly given a ten years' trial under the emperor Shen Tsung.1

A new public conscience concerning the wrongs of labor is being quickened among the intellectuals and in the student class. The movement in the North is led by the professors and students of the National University in Peking. Professor Chen Tu Hsin was put out of the University because of his advanced ideas. The professors send out the students to organize labor and to start night schools and workers education.

The employers now have the opportunity to change conditions if they will. It is their innings. If they maintain that nothing can be done, labor and the intellectuals are determined to see if Russian methods can improve conditions. The propaganda of Moscow has been spread broadcast in Tientsin, Shanghai, Hankow and Canton as in Japan. The day of labor's acquiescence in its own exploitation is passing forever.

Viewing the country as a whole, the people of China are slowly, all too slowly, rising in their standard of life. The Chinese have steadily evolved and developed as a people in the social unity of the family, the guild and the race. They are, however, as yet undeveloped in three important points: in individual initiative, in the realization of social responsibility, and in national solidarity in the spirit of patriotism with a democratic sense of obligation for good government. The effective solidarity that marks Japan is still wanting in China.

1 Wang An Shih advocated the following ideas: 1. That the State take the entire management of commerce, industry and agriculture into its own hands with a view to succoring the working classes and preventing them being "ground into the dust of the rich." 2. That tribunals be established throughout the land to regulate the daily wage and the daily price of merchandise. 3. That the soil be measured and divided into equal areas, graded according to its fertility in order that there might be a new basis of taxation. 4. That taxes be provided by the rich, and the poor be exempt. 5. That pensions be provided for the aged and employment for the unemployed. Julian Arnold, American Commercial Attaché.

There is, however, a revolution in the mind of Asia that is affecting the leaders of this vast continent. If we look beneath the surface and come in contact with the Renaissance or "New Thought Movement" which is sweeping over the students and intellectuals we find the first evidence of the birth of a new China. These awakened students are the vanguard of a future democracy. The movement marks the transition from the mediaeval to the modern world.

During the last two decades China's trade has increased 600 per cent, now standing at approximately one and a half billion dollars. She is still a poor country and her wealth like that of India does not greatly exceed $100.00 per capita. According to the Special Report of the Geological Survey of China, her mineral resources have been greatly overestimated. Her coal reserve of some fifty billion tons is only one-third that of Great Britain but she possesses about half of the world's known resources in antimony.

Nevertheless, with large undeveloped resources and the greatest supply of cheap labor in the world, China is now being rapidly industrialized. The coming of modern industry has been described as "a terrific invasion" for it is entering a social environment as unprepared for it as was mediaeval Europe. Thirty years ago there was not a western modern factory in China. Industry was simple handicrafts. Twenty years ago there were but two modern cotton mills in China with 65,000 spindles. Today there are already 102 mills with 3,165,566 spindles. Two-thirds of these are in mills owned by the Chinese and about half of them have been added in the last four years.

The large iron works near Hankow at full capacity employs 6,000 men and can turn out about 300 steel rails a day. In its cotton factories, China now has 3,165,566 spindles as compared with 3,813,680 in Japan and 34,000,000

in the United States. Nearly 100 electric light plants have been installed within the last dozen years. According to the Report of the Ministry of Agriculture and Commerce there has been a sudden invasion of industry in the Yangtze Valley.1

This development has affected some fifty cities in China. The present foreign sections of Shanghai were mud flats and rice fields a little more than a generation ago. Today the city has over 1,000,000 population, its trade has passed $500,000,000 and it is one of the great ports of the world. It will become one of the most populous cities at the mouth of the world's greatest water shed, which claims one-tenth of the world's population. Hankow with 1,500,000 is in the center of the iron and coal region. Canton has a population of 950,000, and Peking 811,556.

Already modern industry is cutting the workers off from their old social life and moral sanctions. Here are millions now divorced from the land without property and forced to live a hand to mouth existence, as casual labor menaced by the industrial revolution.

Though China has never had a census her total population is conventionally estimated at 400,000,000. The Gov

1 Within the last two years there have sprung up in the Yangtze Valley 53 factories, 26 electric plants, 18 transportation companies, 16 cotton mills, 16 agricultural enterprises, 15 commercial houses, 12 mining companies, 3 fisheries and 8 miscellaneous companies, aggregating a total investment of $74,187,470.

Annual Report of the Ministry of Agriculture and Commerce.

There are few foreign-type articles of domestic consumption that are not now manufactured in China by factories on modern lines, the majority of them without foreign assistance. Of over 1,400 factories in China, 339 are foreign and over 1,000 Chinese. There are 218 silk filatures, 102 cotton spinning and weaving mills and 121 oil mills. The "Commercial Hand Book" lists among the manufacturing industries that are assuming a position of importance, soap and candle factories, match factories, ice and aerated water factories, factories for the preparation of egg products, knitting mills, canneries, cement and brick works, chemical works, dockyards, shipbuilding and engineering works, furniture factories, glass and porcelain works, cold-storage plants, tanneries, oil mills, paper mills, printing and lithographic works, railway shops, rice hulling and cleaning mills, sawmills, modern silk filatures, silk mills, sugar refineries, tobacco factories, water works, woolen factories and arsenals.