(10)
25.
"There are at present about three hundred associations in
Hong Kong with a nominal membership of 111,400. These include
twenty-eight merchants' guilds with a membership of 2,700; twenty-
eight craft guilds or guilds which include both masters and men,
with a membership of 12,000; four clan associations or societies of
persons having the same surname, membership 3, 000; thirty-six
district associations or societies of persons from the same district
with a membership of 40,000; eighty-four labour unions, membership
44,000; and eighty-nine clubs some of which are purely social while
others approximate closely to labour unions, membership 7,000, and
thirty-one seamen's clubs, lodging houses and employment agencies
with a membership of 2,700.
26.
"Each association has its own rules and regulations regarding
membership, privileges and duties, organizations, meetings,
maintenance expenses, and frequently funeral money, but most of
the Trade Unions being composed of members whose wages are small
have no large funds."
A.
From the foregoing it will be seen that labour organisation in China and
in Hong Kong did not evolve gradually from a long drawn out struggle between the
workers and employers for better wages and working conditions, but almost from its
birth was swept up into the vortex of a revolutionary movement which not only
forced the growth but also moulded it into patterns, the shape of which was deter-
mined by political exigency rather than by the needs of the workers themselves. The result of this process was that while the development of labour organisation The organisation, was phenomenally rapid, it was not particularly deep-seated.
in fact, was imposed from without and did not have the strength of a natural and spontaneous growth. Moreover, so far as Hong Kong was concerned, there was the added disadvantage that the politics which dominated the growth of Chinese trade unions were Chinese politics and the unions so formed were instruments in the hands of politicians who were completely unconcerned with the economic and social
problems of this Colony.
The outbreak of war in Europe in the Autumn of 1939 was followed by a
Wage scales sharp increase in the price of all staple commodities in Hong Kong.