CO537-2188 — Page 234

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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.