Page:Earl Browder - Civil War in Nationalist China (1927).pdf/41

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(Provincial Federation) was established with 23 trade unions and 35,000 members.

In Hunan province, after a long strike of 13,000 miners of An-yuen, the movement was established with 25 unions, in which were 40,000 members.

The Shanghai movement was very active, with strikes seamen, silk filature workers, postmen, and others, All these strikes, except that of the seamen, were, however, unsuccessful, and the movement there received a setback, only 20,000 members being organized as a result of the 1922 movement.

On May 1, 1922, the First All-China Labor Congress was held in Canton, on the initiative of the "Secretariat of the Chinese Labor movement." A membership of 230,000 was represented. The most important resolution of this Congress was that providing for the industrial form of organization.

It had been decided at the First Congress to convene the Second Congress at Hankow on May 1, 1923. But on February 7, occurred the massacre in Hankow of the railway leaders and others by Wu Pei-fu, and white terror reigned throughout China. This massacre and repression was planned and ordered by British imperialists who were financing Wu Pei-fu. The immediate occasion for it was the creation of the General Union of Railwaymen on the Peking-Hankow line; Wu Pei-fu dissolved the union, whereupon a general strike broke out which was joined by all Hankow workers. An All-China strike was imminent. But the movement was crushed by the army of Wu Pei-fu, who executed 43 leaders, imprisoned unknown hundreds, and dissolved all trade unions. Even sympathizing schools here closed, and active unionists were driven from the factories and railroads when not imprisoned and shot. During this reign of terror the entire movement was crushed, except at Canton where the trade unions remained intact.

Until September, 1924, there was a period of reaction. Then the movement began to revive. On January 18, 1925, occurred the beginning of a series of strikes in Shanghai, Tsingtao, and other cities. These were all successful, and

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