K. This is the 1st working draft of vol. VI. It still ... - From Marx to Mao

326 MAO TSE-TUNG
and dykes. If one of these four is not right then nothing can be
achieved. In 1942 the comrades of Jingbian led the peasants to
construct six dykes in Tuwan and Yangquiaopan. etc. After the
dykes they built ditches, channeling in the water to irrigate the
land. First of all they solved the question of land rights by dividing
the new irrigated land between landlords and peasants at
ratios of 70 per cent to 30 per cent, 60 per cent to 40 per cent, or
half and half. This aroused the enthusiasm of the peasant masses.
According to the comrades from Jingbian: “So long as the problem
of land rights is solved, it is easy to call on the peasants.
For example, we constructed ten irrigated areas. Over a hundred
new households came in addition to the existing 200 peas-
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TO MAO
ant households and of these more than thirty came from other
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districts.” They also say: “Government funds are very important
in the construction of irrigated land. However we must
mainly rely on the organization of manpower and on unutilized
capital. In Jingbian we built 5,000 mou of irrigated land in 1942.
Altogether we used 28,560 labour days, which is an average of
5.7 per mou. The total funds were 858,000 yuan. Of this 210,000
yuan came from public funds and 648,000 yuan from unutilized
capital absorbed. Of course a large proportion of these resources
was made up by the ordinary folk giving their labour instead of
cash.”
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As regards organization and leadership, the Jingbian comrades say:
“We adopted the following two methods of leadership when
building irrigated land. First we organized water conservancy
committees of three to five men from good peasants in the local-
DISTRIBUTION
ity. These were responsible for balancing equitably the use of
labour, tools, and so forth. However, it was often difficult for
them to solve problems of property rights and water-use rights,
hindering the implementation of water-conservation work.
Therefore it was necessary to have a second method whereby the
government delegated cadres to assist in leadership and to solve
difficult disputes among the masses. Cadres from the Water
Conservancy Bureau [Shuili Ju] and a further three delegated by
the county government took partial control of construction at the
ten sites.”
The comrades of Jingbian have also decided that in 1943 they