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CHINESE LABOUR.
CONDITIONS IN SHANGHAI FACTORIES.
TO THE EDITOR OF THE TIMES. Bir. The letter dated June 13 under the signature of Mr. Fenner Brockway, general secretary of the Independent Labour Party, calis for further reply.
I have just returned to England from Shanghai, where I have resided for very many
years.
I have been succesively chairman of The Shanghai General Chamber of Cominerce, the British Chamber of Commerce, the China Association, and for the last four years I have served on the International Municipal Council, two years of which I was in the vice-chair. think, therefore, 1 may speak with some know- ledge on questions of material interest to the Bettlement. I studied the report of the Com- mission on Child Labour with great care. discussed points of interest with the chairman and other members of the commission, and the report was also the subject of considerable discussion at meetings of the council,
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Mr. Brockway states that children are torn from their parents and recruited in the mass to work at a speed dictated by the machine. That is not true. The mills in Shanghai controlled by foreigners, mostly cotton and silk, employ female labour on a large scale, because the work is light. The husbands are mostly employed Lon wharves or docks or as ricksha coolies. When the mothers go to work they find they must take their children, with them, because |there are no Chinese schools which they can attend, existing schools being too expensive for heir purse, while the International Council Comuld never attempt to provide education for the mass of Chinese children whose parents elect to reside in the settlement set apart for residence of foreigners.
earn.
When the children reach the mills with their mothere, the millowners give them some light work to perform at their mothers' request, mostly to keep them out of mischief, but in no instance in my discussion with foreign mill- owners have I found one who wanted the children. He would much rather be without them. They are not, he states, worth even the small money they are supposed to The Japanese mill where most of the trouble has occurred has built and equipped a school in its compound, and was experimenting with it when I left. The owners have also brought their mill up to, and in some respecta beyond, modern home standards, but that did not prevent the students and their Bolshevist "friends from attacking them in fast, they seemed to be singled out for attention.
Mr. Brockway disclaims all responsibility for standards of labour outside the settlement of Shanghai, That, I may say, is not the attitude adopted by the child labour representative who recently visited Shanghai. Dame Adelaide Anderson made it clear that foreign Shanghai maillowners should refuse to employ child labour which some British companies have already ttempted) merely as an educative exhibition o the Chinese owner, with whom in all parts the country she discussed the question. Put what becomes of the children who are thed admittance to the British or other ga-owned mill The mothers merely trans- r their service to the Chinese-owned mills-
d they are growing up like mushrooms 1ho will readily employ them. So that Mr. Bay, if he is to deal with the question, Just take responsibility for labour in Chinese
, whether in the interior, or in the settle- pent, or on its borders, where they exist by
he score.
The British mill may suffer from altruistic diurts and may with excessive labour cost go uler, but that will not dispose of the child bour question in the settlement of Shanghai.
Land Regulations do not make provision! or the municipal council to take action against i millowners employing child labour, J ad to alter the Land Regulations requires a furthe majority of the ratepayers of the ettlement, the unanimous decision of the Culs of every nationality represented in Ashanghai (almost every known country), and after that of every Minister in the Legation in Baking, and after that the ratification of the Chinese Government; and on much more im- portant questions than child labour it has not been found possible during the last 20 years to efect necessary alterations. It is not the British stone who are responsible, as Mr. Brockway appears to imagine; they are only one among Ladeny.
The secretary of the I.L.P. may rest quite satisfied that European employers of labour in China would welcome nothing so much as European standards of education, law, sanita- tion, and morality (which I presume he embraces under his caption of humanity), but these Standards must be established in China by the Chinese themselves (with whatever aid we or others can or inay be allowed to give them), d that would inevitably lead to the prompt olition of extra-territoriality,
EDWARD F. MACKAY. KHubbards Hall, Harlow, June 16.
jbren
MORE DEMONSTRATIONS.
TIENIIN, June -Twenty-fivea thousand students yesterday evening marched in procession through the native
city i sympathy with the Shanghai strikers. The city police, reinforced by
I A Chang Tso-lin's troops, kept order. A body of Chang Teo-lin's gendarmerie is billeted at the British Consulate in orderi to cooperate with the British Municipal Police in the event of trouble in the Concession.
PEKING, June 15-A procession that included students, merchants, shop. kuopera, and workmen went to the Chinese Foreign Office and demanded that the Government should sover relations with Great Britain and instruct the Tupan of Hankow forcibly to take possession of the Concession.
HANKOW, June 15-Another rioter has died of his wounds, and the death-roll is now nine. The defence troops are still standing by. The British sloop Hollyhock bas arrived and marines have been landed-Reuter.
CANTON CIVILIANS'
VENGEANCE.
SLAUGHTER OF YUNNANESE FUGITIVES.
(FROM OUR CORRESPONDENT.)
HONG-KONG, JUNE 15.
Yang Hsi-min, the commander of the Yunnaneset who were defested at Canton, has fled to Shanghai. He states that his subordinates were bought over by the Kuomintang, and this caused the débâcle.
Foreign witnesses of the fighting st Canton describe the gruesome slaughter of individual Yunnanese by the civilian populace, who cruelly avenged the mili tary domination of the past two years. During the man hunt throughout the city it is estimated that 700 Yunnaness were shockingly mutilated and murdered, including an officer who was crucified upon a telephone pole.
Foreigners at Shameen helplessly watched men who pleaded pitifully for their lives beaten and thrown in a half- conscious condition into creeks, where they were held down by bamboo poles or forced under water by showers of stones and drowned. Finally a party of foreigners, including British and French naval seamen, interfered and rescued several persons.
A British officer harangued the crowd in Chinese. The latter pleaded that they had suffered under intolerable grievances, but they desisted from further maltreatment of fugitives and refrained from making any anti-foreign demonstra- tion.
BRITISH SHIPS ON CHINA STATION.
H.M. sloop Petersfield (tender to H.M.S. Hawkins, flagship, China Station), with the Commander-in-Chief China Station on board, arrived at Shanghai on Sunday, The sloop Hollyhock arrived at Hankow yesterday, and the gunboat Gnat at Kiukiang on June 15.
The present disposition of the other ships on the China Station is as follows:-Woodlark (gunboat), Chiokiang; Woodcock (gunboat), Wuhu: Bee and Mantis (gunboata), Hankow Cricket (gunboat), Changaba Scarab (gun boat), chang: Teal and Widgeon (gunboats), Chingking Cockchafer (gunboat), Wanhaien. The cruiser Despatch sailed for Yangteze on June 13, and the sloop Bluebell and the cruiser Darban are at Hong-konk
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