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14.
larger unions died, and some unions were even reported
to search out dying men in order to enlist them as members
before they became due for burial.
While the Seamen's Strike of 1922 may have had
some economic justification, the general strike and
boycott of 1925 and the following years was a purely
political movement, and the early attempts at settlement
failed because its object had little or nothing to do with
Hong Kong itself. It was part of an attempt to bring
about a revolution in China on the lines of the Russian
revolution. The attempt broke down mainly because it
lacked the support of the urban proletariat which had no
deep-rooted sense of grievance. The city worker, although his hours of work are long and his pay, by European standards, excessively low, is generally better off than
the villager, and, in a country which is not yet to any extent industrialised, it is difficult to arouse ill-
feeling between employer and employed while the master works with his men and eats at the same table. In the country
districts, where, owing to the substitution of landlords
for peasant proprietors, there was a real sense of
grievance, the movement made headway, but in Canton and Hong Kong the influence of Communism was rapidly dying out when the terrible excesses committed during the Communist raid on Canton in December 1927 brought home to the people of the two cities its dangerous character.
The general exodus of union leaders and their satellites which took place in 1925, a process which was completed by the wholesale expulsion from Hong Kong of persons who could not give a satisfactory account of
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