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THE LABOUR MAEKET. 299
PRINTING.
The Chinese also anticipated Europeans in the invention of printing.
Towards
the end of the sixth century the art is spoken of ad already long practised, and if
the Persian historians had been studied in the West,
it would have been known
here a hundred and fifty years sooner, for it is clearly explained in a work by
Rashid-ed-din, composed about the year 1310. Not only were they acquainted
with the process of printing from wooden blocks, but they also practised stone and
copper engraving, and towards the middle of the eleventh century movable terracotta
types were invented by a blacksmith. But the immense number of characters
required in Chinese writing has hitherto prevented the adoption of this method,
except for popular works and journals, for which a limited number of signs suffices.
Hence blocks of pear-wood, carved with the graver in intaglio, or copper plates in
relief,
'
still continue to be
published from movable types.
employed. Nevertheless admirable editions have been
Such is the collection of 6,000 old works edited by
the Emperor Kang-hi, and for which 250,000 movable copper types had to be cut ;
such are also the works issued by the Imperial Library, the elegant characters of
which are known as the " collected pearls."
THE LABOUR MARKET.
The Chinese artisans are in general paid at a much lower rate than those of
Europe and the New World. In Peking, Shanghai, Canton, and Hankow it
varies from 5d. to lOd. a day ; so that, notwithstanding the cheaper price
of food,
few except the silk-weavers, who are better paid, have even a sufficient diet, living
mostly on boiled rice, cabbage, and occasionally a little fish. Yet these pale-faced,
feeble-looking labourers have really great muscular strength, and in the central and
southern provinces they transport nearly all the merchandise not forwarded by
water. Like the other social classes, they have organized extensive unions, which
often arrange strikes, as in Europe, to keep up the price of labour, and which have
even founded co-operative societies. Thanks to their spirit of solidarity and
admirable discipline, they nearly always get the better of the capitalists, and so
fully* recognised is their power, that in many places the employers even decline the
struggle. At the beginning of every industrial season the workmen themselves
fix the rate of pay, which is generally faithfully adhered to on both sides. They
might easily get possession of the whole industrial plant of the country, but for the
fact that the trades unions form so many independent and rival societies. These
associations subject apprentices to two or three years of downright shivery; they
constitute a sort of aristocracy of labour, weighing heavily on all outsiders, the
most fortunate of whom in ordinary times are the professional mendicants. Like
the traders and artisans, these mendicants have their recognised unions, with
statutes, feasts, and assemblies.
G. W. Cook dwells in forcible language on the evils of co-operation amongst
the Chinese, whom he describes as a people essentially addicted to co-operative