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some cases settled without recourse to a strike, usually on a basis of percentage increases. A few strikers, such as those of the Chinese Restaurant Employees and the Watchmakers' Employees, were never formally settled, but new hands were engaged to take the place of those who struck.
The following is a list of the principal trades and industries in which disputes occurred during the year.
Seamen, Stevedores, Tallymen, Launchmen, Building Carpenters, Motor Bus Drivers, Chinese Restaurant Employees, Medicine Workers, Cargo-boats, Sharks' fin workers, Sawyers, Dyers, Chinese boat-builders, Caulkers, Watchmakers, Bakers, Low Level Tram Company's Employees, Sugar Lighter coolies, knitting factories, Hongkong Electric Light Company's Employees, and Chinese Blacksmiths.
An extraordinary amount of detailed labour was involved in the conferences connected with the settlements of these disputes. True economic questions undoubtedly arose—the position of labour in the rest of the world could but be reflected here: but they were exploited to an extent with which the main body of the labourers had no sympathy and which carried the disputes into a realm where the economic origin had little to do with the demands made by agitators as the minimum required for a settlement. The principal cause of this effect was the political position of China, and particularly of South China: the services of labour, and of such funds as the Guilds could provide, had been enlisted in a purely political struggle in a manner that went far towards putting the control of the balance of political power in the hands of its leaders. It is impossible to deny that this power was unscrupulously used or to believe that the objects of the leaders when they had realised the extent of their opportunity were to forward either the interests of their country or the wishes of the labourers for whom they spoke. The general strike was largely a matter of the intimidation of willing workers: a policy made only too easy by the gregarious and timid habits of the Chinese labourer. Some of course were carried away by the glowing promises of higher wages made to them by a combination that seemed to dominate Canton and to hold Hongkong also in the hollow of its hand: but even these have begun to see daylight and to realise that an increase of wages is of little value, if the increase is largely swallowed up by the demands of their "victorious" leaders and by its boomerang effect on employment and prices. Further, whatever may have been the position in 1921 concerning the readiness of employers to consider the demands of labour, (and wages in some trades or sections of them did require adjustment) the workman is beginning to realise that he can now always secure a reasonable hearing without utilising the services of an expensive and dangerous agitator as a medium, and that the real value of the Great Strike (if it had any value at all for them) was that it impressed on employers the necessity for quick and reasonable accessibility to complaints and demands: and the lesson was pushed full home on all alike, and there was nothing left for the later strikes to do. These were at best poor copies and shewed nothing on the credit side which could not have been obtained