There are scores of millions of men in China glad to work for a few pennies per day.
There are no labor unions in China, and in some districts the employer can have his workmen beheaded for demanding an increase of pay. If the venerable old New York merchant is right, China ought to be certainly a marvellously successful country industrially.
As a matter of fact, China is dead, and there is no better proof of her complete deadness than the fact that among all her millions of coolies there is not enough spirit for the formation of a labor union.
The energy of the British workman established England's industrial greatness and fought for and won the great trades-union system which the workmen of this country are developing so ably. ——
Suppose it were true that trades unionism, with its higher wages and shorter hours, decreases exports—what of it?
Is it not more important to have ten million workmen well paid, with reasonable leisure and decent lives, than to have a handful of iron masters and coal-mine owners piling up millions of pounds and producing sons like the famous "Jubilee Juggins"?
Wouldn't it be better for China if her several hundred millions of citizens were well paid, well fed and well educated, even though Li Hung Chang and the other prosperous viceroys should all be paid a little less money, and own fewer square miles of rice fields and tea plants? ——
In Huxley's admirable biography, written by his son, you may read of a 'longshoreman who, thanks to reasonably short hours of work and a little leisure, took up the study of scientific subjects.
He was aided by Huxley, who lent him a microscope, and ultimately this common 'longshoreman's researches were of real value to the scientific world.
Isn't it well to have a trades-union system which curbs the avariciousness of employers and gives workmen a chance to develop the best that is in them?