EAST & WEST

Hawke's Bay Tribune, Volume XX, Issue 203, 16 August 1930, Page 3

EAST & WEST

TOILERS OF THE EAST LOW PAY, MEAGRE COMFORT. HASTINGS W.E.A. LECTURE. After describing the low wages and poor standards oi comfort ruling m the Far East, Mr. J. A. Brailstord, 8.A., lecturing before the W.E.A. at Hastings on Thursday night, pointed out that the competition of the Eastern peoples with our own was not prevented by exclusion laws. He instanced the present disastrous slump in the British cotton manufacturing industry, one of the chiet causes of which was that the Lancashire producers were undersold by those of India, China and Japan. It was impossible to disregard the squalor of the life of the masses in Asiatic cities, said Mr. Brailsford. He told how women, sometimes with children on their bucks, helped in the hard toil of coaling steamers at Nagasaki by hand. Beggars on the streets of China would sometimes strike their heads against the paving stones in an effort to arouse sympathy. The advent of the factory industries had brought country people to the towns, as in the industrial era in Western lands. Iho lure of somewhat higher wages tempted the peasants, who did not know how much more costly it is to live decently in a city than on a farm, in China factory-owners were hardly at all checked by regulations or inspection, and the labour unions were comparatively weak. After a great struggle some slight restriction had been placed on the exploitation of child labour. From the report of the Child Labour Commission which made an investigation in Shanghai in 1923 the speaker quoted passages such as the following:—

“The Commission has seen very many children at work who could not have been more than six years of age. The hours of work are generally 12. with not more than one hour for a meal. The children frequently have to stand the whole time they are at work. Ln many industries day and night work is the rule, there being two shifts of 12 hours each. . . , In some instances contractors obtain young children from the country districts, paying the parents 4/- a month for the services of each child. The contractor is able to make a'profit of about 8/- a month in lespect of each child. These children are frequently most miserably housed and fed. They receive no money and their conditions of life are practically those of slavery.”

]n spite of such revelations, the proposal to abolish child labour—or even to limit it to children over 10 years of age —was met with protests of “righteous indignation” on the part of people, who claimed that the children would be even worse off if thjy were excluded from the factories. since their parents could not support them. This was the argument that had been ( used in similar circumstances in Britain and whose falsity had been proved bv the event. After a great contest some improvement had been brought about in Shanghai, and in Japan a law forbidding child labour and also prohibiting the employment of women on night shifts in the mills had been passed. It was not enforced for some veans. but it had taken effect from last July. Apart from the modern factory system and the creation of big businesses, the harshness of life in the East had been largely mitigated, said Mr. Brailsford, by the lovalty of the clan members to one another and by the humane guild system. Some of the modern emp’oyers were carrying over this spirit into their enterprises, arranging welfare work and copartnership schemes probably as excellent as the best in Britain or any Western land, but others exploited their workers mercilessly. Profitsharing was common in China and Japan. The humanity of the old system was*seen in the unwillingness of employers to dismiss workers even when a business was losing money. It was a very interesting ouestion. said the lecturer whether the class struggle would develop in the East as in the West or whether out of the old spirit of the clan and guild would grow a system of free co-operation. He quoted Dr. Hem— Hodgkin, author of “China in the Family of Nations’ ’as venturing the hope that China would avoid the class struggle and attain industrial democracy in a natural way. If. we in the West could learn the way of friendly cooperation. the lecturer thought, it would make easier the intercourse between East and West, which was bound to increase with the iniprove- ■ input of means of communication. While postponing discussion of the exclusion policy to a later lecture. Mt. Brailsford said the economic interdependence of the nations should be studied: the people of the East were coming rapidly toward our standards of wages mid prices? we also were affected by the contacts with the East. INTERESTING DISCUSSION. An interesting discussion followed. A member of the audience mentioned the terrible infant mortality among factory workers’ families in India, hi the industrial area of Bombay, for instance, two out of three babies in the first year of life. In reply to a question. Mr. Brailsford said he had not intended to suggest that Eastern competition was the only cause of unemployment in England. Probably the chief cause was the lowering of prices since the war ended. This meant that ail wealth invested at fixed rates of interest was greatly enhanced in value, while producers were penalised bv having to sell on a falling market and so were discouraged from producing and from giving employment. France had avoided the slump by maintaining prices at a high level and accenting n much lowered value for the franc. There was no unemployment in France.

The meeting was presided over bv Mr. Diamond, who expressed appreciation of the lecture and emnlmsisod the hitertwi”ing of the industrial interests of all neop’es and races.