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With the preservation and perpetuation of the family exalted as the supreme end of man, anything that appeared to be conducive there to was inevitable regarded as virtue. The enrichment of one's self and one's relations was not only the perquisite but the duty of the ruler. It belonged to his status, In modern times union officials have frequently show themselves susceptible to the influence of tradition.
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Agitation by the 'governed for reform was as improper and contrary to the nature of things as for the governors to interfere in the private life of the governed. The result was a static society where the virtues of toleration, compromise, and acceptance of the rightness of things as they are, throve as helpful to survival.
The family merged in the clan. There are to this day. in Hong Kong associations of men with the same surname. And in China there were guilds and societies many of them secret, the most famous or notorious being the Triad Society or Heaven and arth Association. It was traditionally established in A.D.1074 and its object originally was to overthrow the Tsing Dynasty or Manchus and restore the Ming Dynasty. It possessed an elaborate ritual based on the fabulous history of its founders, which is described in considerable detail in Stanton's
book. It was concerned in most of the rebellions in China for
over two hundred years, and has survived the overthrow of the Manchus, its professed raison d'étre, and either substituted as its object the overthrow of imperialism or degenerated into simple racketeering. Gangs of bullies who sell "protection" frequently bind themselves together in a debased imitation of
Triad forms.
The guilds divided society vertically not horizontally as do the modern trade unions. The apprentice in a handicraft guild might in time become a master and influential in the regulation of his trade. The guilds were supreme within their own respective trades but did not concern themselves with the
Government of the country. Some of the powerful commercial
associations had branches in all important towns to which their
members when travelling might go as to a club.
Into this civilized and cultured but mediaeval society with its clans and guilds and secret societies broke the western world of the nineteenth century swollen with the. industrial revolution. China resisted, accepted, and imitatea. Before the end of the century cotton factories were erected in