98
EUGENE COOPER
Following the vice-chairman's speech, the business part of the meeting ended and the entertainment began, performances being given by a patriotic troop hired for the occasion. One number was performed by the children of the school at the Woodwork Carvers' Union premises. The evening was capped by a pro-union play of the Waiting for Lefty agit-prop type, in which a worker injured on the job learns how really insecure his position as a proletarian is with nothing but his own labor to sell. Unless he stands united with his fellow workers in a union, he really has no chance of supporting his family with his now injured arm, as his boss refuses to take him back on the job. He is attended to by a union doctor and two union members, having no money to afford a private doctor. Gradually he and his wife come to see the benefits of union membership, and the play ends happily with all setting out to attend the union meeting.
There were also dances to revolutionary themes with dancers dressed in costumes of Chinese people in various walks of life, and one dance depicting the victories won by the Chinese People's Liberation Army. The troop had its own Chinese style orchestra which rendered the tunes to accompany the dances.
A Broadsheet was published for the occasion in which the yearly budget was printed and circulated to all who attended.
Selection of officers, discussions of rising prices and increases in standard of living, announcements of wage demands, reports on relations with other guilds, reports of income and expenditures were all common items of business at traditional Chinese guild meetings (Burgess, 1928:145-6) and their presence in the proceedings of the yearly membership meeting of the Woodwork Carvers' Union is noteworthy in that regard.
While a religious service honoring the guild founder or a patron saint was often part of the traditional program, both Burgess and Morse had already noted the decline or absence of religious ceremonies or common guild worship in the early twentieth century (Burgess, 1928: 176; Morse, 1909:17). Thus the absence of such services at the yearly meeting of the Woodwork Carvers' Union is not of any singular importance.
Of interest, however, is the preservation in the program of musical performances, dances and plays which were typical items in the program of traditional guild yearly meetings (Gamble, 1921: