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Vocational optimism of this kind is naturally to be expected from those who regard the blood of martyrs as the seed of the Church, and who hold that adversity is good for the soul; but, surveying the Chinese situation dispassionately, it is impossible to deny that the sympathy and support, publicly extended by missionary societies and the National Christian Council to the agitation for the annulment of the treaties and extra-territoriality, have been considerable factors in creating the present situation and have involved us in the necessity of protecting our interests by armed forces. One may admire and respect the philanthropic devotion which generally inspires the self-sacrificing work of individual missionaries, and yet deplore the theological bias that prevents the collective intelligence of these religious societies from recognising the social facts which lie at the root of the national character. The bare, unchanging fact which dominates-and always has dominated-the Chinese problem is, that under a social system that involves chronic over-population and everrecurring paroxysms of unrest, neither Christian doctrines nor democratic institutions can provide the one thing needful, to wit, law and order. The education which China needs before it can rise to higher things is that which will help to raise the bulk of the population above the hunger-line; for, as Mill says: "The triumphs of science over the powers of nature can never become the means of improving, and elevating the universal lot, until, in addition to just institutions, the increase of mankind shall come under the deliberate guidance of judicious foresight.' Failing recognition of this central fact, all the progressive panaceas commended to Young China militant by Professor Dewey, Mr. Bertrand Russell," Upton Close," and other political theorists, can only serve to make confusion more confounded.

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His Majesty's opposition has been taken to task by the Treasury Bench for giving open support to the CantoneseBolshevik-Nationalists and for endeavouring to prevent the despatch of the Shanghai Defence Force. As a matter of party tactics, however, there is nothing very remarkable in the fact that the Labour Party should proceed on the usual assumption that, in questions of foreign policy, England is always wrong and her opponents invariably right. Moreover there is not much to choose between the action of the Opposition in supporting the cause of

Mr. Eugene Chen, and that of the Foreign Office, which justifies its "moderation" in regard to the Nanking outrages by the desire not to embarrass the Nationalist General, Chiang Kai-shek, “in his task of introducing order." In the domain of party politics one does not look for sincerity of convictions, or careful scrutiny of essential facts. But when the Independent Labour Party, in its zeal to befriend "over a quarter of the world's proletariat," sets out to investigate Labour conditions and Labour organizations in China, and publishes the results for the enlightenment of public opinion in this country, one might reasonably expect their report to reflect at least some serious study of China's history and economic conditions. As a matter of fact, making every allowance for the purpose of political propaganda underlying this investigation, it would be difficult to cite a more striking example of collective failure to profit by the experience of former generations, of indifference to the realities of the present, and inability to appreciate the effects of China's social system in her political and administrative disorganization.

The reader who compares the Independent Labour Party pamphlets with Mr. Mallory's enquiry into the causes and results of chronic famine conditions in China will find in their respective conclusions much food for reflection. Not the least remarkable thing about this Labour document is the fact that any responsible body of intelligent men should hope thereby to make any useful or coherent impression upon the British working classes. However vague the man-in-the-street's conception of China and the Chinese, even the superficial knowledge of the subject which he gleans from the daily press should suffice to demonstrate the absurdity of endeavouring to apply factory legislation, “legalised” trade unions, co-operative movements, and Labour research departments, as remedies for the ills of the body economic or as measures to raise the standard of living for China's toiling millions. Anyone who follows Colonel Malone patiently to the end, can discern the root of the matter in the Report's concluding sentence, which declares that the " cause of the Chinese workers and of the Canton Government, which alone champions them, is the cause of the workers all the world over." What the Chinese worker might think of the plans therein devised for his uplifting, we shall never know, for the reason that he will never hear of them; but, VOL 246.

NO. 501.

K

if he did, it is safe to say that his view of the matter would be best expressed in Kipling's lines:

The toad beneath the harrow knows
Exactly where each tooth-point goes;
The butterfly upon the road

Preaches contentment to that toad.

He would certainly not waste time in discussing the panaceas whereby his country is to be made into a paradise for workers, whereby the heavy toil put upon women is to be relieved, child labour prohibited, and every man's wage made adequate for the maintenance of his family. He would look upon such ideas as manifestations of the foreigner's foolishness, fully realising that they can have no possible bearing upon the painful realities of life as he knows it, and as his forbears knew it, long before the first white man came to disturb the immemorial ways of the Middle Kingdom.

The Independent Labour Party's delegate was duly impressed by" the cheapness of human life in China." He learned that the wages of a cotton-mill worker at Shanghai amount to 24s. a month, a sum considerably higher than he could earn outside that centre of capitalist exploitation. Colonel Malone was also informed that the agricultural population, that is to say, the vast majority of the nation, spend 55 per cent. of their earnings on food, and that it costs a town coolie 75 per cent. He admits that the cost of food-a bare subsistence at best-is so great that " quite clearly the wives and children are forced to work if the family is to live at all, even at their low standard." His simple solution for the problem thus presented is "to make the man's wage adequate for the maintenance of his family." It is as if an engineer, summoned to devise means of protection against the Mississippi floods, were to recommend a reduction of the water level. True, this butterfly upon the road conceives China's whole vast economic problem as a matter of factory and trade-union organization, and in discussing the question of bettering the conditions ruling in China, he assumes-possibly from force of habit—the validity of comparing them with those which obtain in Europe and America.

From the depths of this profound delusion he asks: "Must the Chinese workers go through all that our workers went through in the nineteenth century?" Here, again, the simple remedy proposed is trade union organization, to be brought about, in the

first place, by delegating three English trade unionists to make a six to twelve months' tour in China. These remedial measures, be it observed, are intended to be not only for the benefit of the "exploited" Chinese, but in the interests of British workers, "whose livelihood must be protected by raising the appallingly low pay of the Chinese worker."

As regards China's position as a market for British goods, the Independent Labour Party's emissary was compelled to recognise the truth-frequently ignored in high commercial quarters—that "so long as the standard of life of the mass of the Chinese people is not raised, they will continue to make a very small demand on the services of the workers of other countries." According to figures obtained on the spot, the estimated expenditure of the average farming family on clothing amounts to less than £3 a year, and on furnishing about one shilling, as against £43 1OS. and £6 6s. under the same headings in Iowa. From these facts and figures, Colonel Malone draws the conclusion that " the effort to improve the condition of the Chinese workers should therefore not fail to win the approval of Lancashire."

Two unwarranted assumptions underlie this argument: first, that trade union organization is applicable, and capable of improving the condition of the masses, in China; and second, that increased purchasing power, if created, would take the form of an increased demand for manufactured goods. Since this Report was published, the fact has been amply demonstrated that the trade unions organized by the Cantonese Nationalists are purely predatory associations, calculated to lower rather than to raise the standard of living. As to the latter, it should be manifest to every serious investigator of the subject that the intense pressure of population on the means of subsistence in China can only be relieved, and the standard of living permanently raised, by teaching the masses something very different to that which they have been taught in the past, namely, to limit the size of their families. The reports of the International Famine Relief Commission bring out clearly the fact that, even if improved methods of farming, transport and distribution could be introduced in agricultural districts, the results at best could but shift the hunger-line a little way for a short time and for a comparatively small number of people. As to the improvement of factory conditions and the general development of industrialism in China,

neither improved organization, legalised trade unionism, regulation of hours, prohibition of child labour, or any other measures can ever raise the standard of wages so long as an unlimited supply of surplus labour is prepared to work for the barest living wage. If China's industrial enterprises could be organized and developed under efficient management, and protected from the "squeezes of warlords and local officials, this inexhaustible reservoir of the cheapest labour in the world might easily result in competition of a kind which other industrial nations would find it exceedingly hard to meet without reducing their own standard of living.

Lancashire may therefore regard it as a merciful dispensation of Providence that the rapacity of the Chinese militarists and other predatory elements, combined with the mercantile community's inability to produce collective (as distinct from personal) honesty in business, has so far prevented this competition from becoming acute, and that it is likely to do so for a long time to come. As a matter of significant fact, there is no case on record of a purely Chinese industrial or financial enterprise on a large scale achieving permanent success outside the protected limits of the Treaty ports.

Those who, forgetting the hard-won lessons of the past, are inclined to subscribe to the delusions or idealisms now prevalent concerning China, those who have been misled by the vain imaginings and grandiloquent rhetoric of works such as those lately produced by Mr. Wong Ching-wai and "Upton Close," and all who seek to form an accurate opinion of the conditions actually existing in that unfortunate country, would do well to study carefully the plain, grim facts as set forth last year by Mr. Mallory, Secretary to the International Famine Relief Commission. This work can hardly fail to convince the reader that all the words and gestures of the politicians, all the current shibboleths concerning national aspirations, racial equality and extra-territoriality, count for nothing in the silent struggle for bare subsistence in which the toiling millions are continually engaged. Mr. Mallory's book suggests also the reflection that genuine concern for the wider interests of humanity might well have prompted the civilized Powers to sink their differences in a combined effort to put an end to civil war in China, rather than to remain benevolently neutral spectators of the state of anarchy wherein millions have been butchered to make a Tuchun's holiday.

J. O. P. BLAND

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