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factory law were recognized and acknowledged in the provisions made by the Min- istry of Industries for the training of factory inspectors and the decision to enforce the reform programme by stages. The difficulties were enormous in the absence of uniform government control throughout the country and the lack of properly trained officers. Under-capitalized enterprises, precariously established, dreaded the expense of improvements as leading to bankruptcy. Difficulties also arose concern- ing the application of these laws in the foreign concessions, such as Shanghai, which enjoyed extraterritorial rights. In September, 1931, M. Camille Pône and Dame Adelaide Anderson, two representatives from the International Labour Office at Geneva, arrived in Shanghai at the invitation of the Minister of Industries of the Chinese government to advise upon the question of factory inspection*. Difficulty was experienced in giving effect to their recommendations owing to
owing to the conflict between China's claim of sovereign rights and the Municipal Council's claim to administrative control within the Settlement. "In the situation now obtaining national legislation exists and although this is extremely far-reaching there evidence that the Chinese authorities are willing to follow the recommendations of M. Pône and begin with basic questions of health and safety. The Council has endeavoured to apply these basic principles in the Settlement by the most practical method of applying them uniformly and effectively within its jurisdiction. In the meantime the Council will continue its efforts to improve factory conditions generally in so far as may be practical within the scope of its powers and taking into consideration the somewhat peculiar problems, political and otherwise, with which it is confronted." From the report for 1937 of the Shanghai Municipal Council, it would appear that the factory inspection issue between the Council and the Chinese authorities was still unsolved by the time the Sino-Japanese hostilities broke out.
43. By 1937 China possessed a considerable body of social and industrial legis- lation dealing occasionally with the most trivial details and interspersed with pious exhortations to employers and employed. The legislation represents an ideal to which the approach from actual conditions must be necessarily by slow stages. As an example of the disparity between theory and practice I would quote the case of a
Chinese industrialist, contemplating the erection in Hong Kong of a factory in place of one fallen into the hands of the Japanese, on whose behalf I was approached with the request that local legislation should be modified to enable him to employ shifts of women workers throughout the whole twenty-four hours in order that his machinery should never lie idle and that he might compete with similar factories in China where the night employment of women prevailed. Other- wise, he would not risk his capital.
44. Chinese factory law describes an ideal to be slowly attained rather than a set of conditions to be enforced although the Factory Law became effective in 1931 the only district factory inspection office established in 1937 was in Shanghai "while those in Kwangtung and Szechuen provinces were under contemplation."†
45. The hostilities in 1937-8 have led to the Chinese government authorizing the Commission of Military Affairs to administer farming, mining, industrial and commercial enterprises during war time in accordance with some twenty ordinances specially proclaimed by the Government. Strikes, suspension of business, slack- ness and intimidation are forbidden under penalty of seven years' imprisonment.
The chief change, however, is that in order to rouse the patriotic enthusiasm of the workers and increase production the Government has reversed its policy and given orders to the various provincial cities that the organization of labour unions is to be encouraged.¶
46. Before the outbreak of hostilities in August, 1937, there were said to be over a million unemployed workers in China, although during the first half of 1937 industry was generally thriving. In Shanghai there was considerable labour unrest, one strike involving the whole silk weaving industry.
*
"Regulation of Industrial Conditions" reprinted from Shanghai Municipal Council Annual Report, 1933. + "Chinese Babour Conditions in 1937" (in Chinese).
Ibid.