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LIKE CATTLE AND HORSES S . A . SMITH
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LIKE CATTLE AND HORSES
A book in the series
comparative and international working-class history General Editors: Andrew Gordon, Harvard University Daniel James, Indiana University Alexander Keyssar, Harvard University
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LI KE CATTLE AN D HORSES Nationalism and Labor in Shanghai, 1895 –1927
s. a. smith
duke university press
Durham and London 2002
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© 2002 Duke University Press All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America on acid-free paper Designed by Amy Ruth Buchanan. Typeset in Bembo by G&S Typesetters, Inc. Library of Congress Catalogingin-Publication Data appear on the last printed page of this book.
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I have the misfortune to be born Chinese And the greater misfortune to be an enslaved worker We work more than ten hours a day, yet earn a pittance Like cattle and horses Yet they say our lives are easy We lose blood and sweat For a few hundred cash If we buy oil or salt, there is no money left for rice We go the whole day without a meal We dare not think of different clothes for different seasons Even the rags we wear are too few At night we sleep in mat sheds or under the open sky Truly it is hell on earth It’s a cruel life Why is everything so unfair? We cry to heaven yet there is no reply Oh heaven, do even you look down on us poor folk? Small wonder, that the boss is so heartless If we fall short in any way He tells us to be off If we bow three times and implore him He may let us off with a fine So the righ get richer and the poor poorer Who created this evil state of affairs? In the past we workers dare not even mention it But now we have the chance to make the future Just to talk of liberation is vain We have to bring it about ourselves Come workers! Let us hasten to see justice done poem by an anonymous worker, Laodong zhoukan 12, 5 November 1921
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CONTE NTS
Acknowledgments ix Introduction 1 1
Traditional Social Networks and Identities 15
2
Nationalist and Labor Protest at the End of the Qing Dynasty 38
3
The 1911 Revolution in Shanghai 60
4
Nationalist and Labor Protest, 1913 –1919 76
5
The May Fourth Movement of 1919 92
6
The Discourse of Class 116
7
The Communist Attempt to Organize Labor, 1920 –1923 133
8
Workers and the Nation: Left versus Right, 1923 –1925 148
9
The May Thirtieth Movement, 1925 168
10
National and Class Identities, 1925 –1927 190
11
The Surge in Labor Organization, 1927 214
12
The Climax of the National Revolution, March–April 1927 236 Conclusion 257 Notes 271 Bibliography 325 Index 351
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AC KNOWLE DG M E NTS
This book has been far longer in the making than I ever anticipated when I began the research for it in 1986. Since then it has split, amoeba-like, into two books, the first of which, on the Chinese Communist Party in Shanghai during the 1920s, was published in 2000. This volume, however, despite many vicissitudes, is basically the book I planned to write from the outset. I must, therefore, begin by thanking the British Council for awarding me a six-month scholarship to Fudan University in Shanghai, which is where I began my research. Professor Huang Meizhen of the History D