5 to 10 cents. These coolies not only bear the burden of their physical loads, but also a terrific burden of taxation and middle man. Thus, the rickshaw coolies, even in Canton, pay a tax which, in proportion to their earnings, is doubtless the heaviest borne by any section of the population. Paid in the first place to the Government by the owner of the rickshaw, it is then added to the rent which the coolie must pay; but when it gets to the coolie it is 12 cents per day, instead of five. The coolies of all kinds and grades suffer from the middleman, who contracts jobs and then lets them out to all sorts of sub-middlemen, so that the coolies get about half or less of what has actually been paid for the work. I was told of instances which the Union had investigated, where the coolies had received less than 20%. The average earnings of an able-bodied young coolie is $15 (Chinese) per month—when employed. Unemployment, a terrible scourge for all kinds of labor in China, is especially chronic among the coolies, on account of the constant flow of peasants, driven from the land, coming into the cities. Old and infirm coolies live from hand to mouth on the few coppers they pick up here and there from odd jobs. I have seen in Canton, great heavy carts loaded high with cans bearing the "Socony" (Standard Oil Co. of New York) label, being pulled thru the streets by gangs of men, women, and children, evidently families, starved-looking, gaunt and exhausted, straining with all their might at the ropes—and earning an average of 15 cents each for twelve hours labor, to the greater profit of Standard Oil. It made me understand more clearly why Rockefeller prizes his Chinese business, and why capitalists everywhere are determined that the "Bolshevik" trade unions of China must be destroyed.
The clerks, in stores, shops, and tea houses, form another large group. In Canton about 35,000 are organized in the trade unions. There are still traces in Canton of the semi-slave, semi-feudal conditions under which this class works still in most places in China. The Unions have, however, abolished many of the worst abuses, such as corporal punishment, unlimited hours, etc. Gradually order and system is being brought even into the lives of
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