ABSTRACT
This is the substance of our petition. We venture to note that the labor problem emerged long ago, following the Industrial Revolution in Europe, and during the more than one hundred years since then countless politicians and students of politics have racked their brains studying it day and night, yet no fundamental solution has been found. Only the advanced nations of Europe and America, after repeatedly accumulating experience, have drawn significant lessons from it. They have accordingly promulgated explicit laws and regulations for the protection of labor, and as a result the poor and miserable laborers who used to have no means to seek redress have gradually gained equal status with ordinary people, and the fortunes of these nations have been improved by a certain measure of peace and stability. Recently there has been the example of Soviet Russia, where a worker-peasant government founded entirely by the toilers seized political power, and the national constitution was also fashioned by the laborers. From this we may know the truly important role of a country’s workers in founding the state. This is a natural law of evolution in the world; of that there can be no doubt. Lately, the workers in our country have a gained a considerable degree of consciousness. In the areas of our country where industry is somewhat developed, all the workers are forming one organization after another in the hope of pooling their wisdom and energies to improve their own status and alleviate their sufferings. This is altogether reasonable and proper. Moreover, some have been forced by the problems between labor and capital to unite in strike action. From 112the point of view of justifiable self-defense, uniting for strike action is indeed a right to which workers are indisputably entitled. In our country, however, the elite 2 has habitually adopted the ugly attitude of despising manual workers. Because the workers’ efforts to organize and all their legitimate actions are not adequately protected by law, the generality of power-holders in our country wantonly ride roughshod over the workers and treat with particular hostility their efforts to organize and all of their legitimate actions. For this reason, in recent years there have been frequent incidents everywhere arising from the problems of inequality between labor and capital. As those who wield power today are unaware of world trends and ignorant of the fundamentals of government, they think that the workers are easy to deceive. Their stupidity is truly phenomenal. In addition, lawmakers in the past have also been prisoners of such prejudices, thus failing to perceive this reality. This is why the working class in our country remains moaning in misery, with no place to turn for redress. How tragic! They are really unaware that the workers in our country are an integral part of the Republic of China, so according to the principle that all the people of the Republic of China are strictly equal, the workers in our country should also receive protection under the law and may not be arbitrarily discriminated against. Workers also constitute in fact an absolute majority of the people of the country, and according to the principle of the greatest happiness for the greatest number, how can the workers possibly be rejected and ignored? Besides, the foundation of the country rests entirely on the pillar of the domestic producers; the consumers have no part in it. All those who know anything at all about modern political, social, and economic history are in unanimous agreement with this principle. Moreover, in society, the workers devote themselves entirely to production, and they exert the greatest effort of all classes in the country, yet their lot is the cruelest, despite the fact that their contribution to state and society is greatest. Lawmakers in the past have devoted their attention to protecting the minority in our country—those special classes in society who consume but do not produce—yet they have mercilessly abandoned and excluded from the masses of the people the workers, who constitute the absolute majority of the nation’s people and who exert the most effort and make the greatest contribution yet suffer the cruelest lot. How can this be deemed just as regards the proper rights and duties of the citizenry? Consequently, on the basis of the various arguments given above, and taking into account all aspects of the question, there is a definite need today to enact labor laws, and these laws must definitely be included in the fundamental basic law. Thus in the future a group that has grasped political power will not lightly venture to invent pretexts, or use special security laws and other tricks to oppress the workers. In the current process of formulating a constitution, this is indeed the most urgent task. But today there are those who argue that our country’s laws 113have never discriminated against workers, so why cry before you’re hurt? Don’t you know, they say, that strikes and disturbances are clearly defined as crimes under criminal law (interim new criminal code, article no. 224) and that Mr. Yuan’s 3 security laws have not yet been repealed (the Beijing Government’s Directive on Security and Police, no. 28, March 1913). Thus to claim that our country’s laws have never discriminated against the workers is simply to deceive oneself as well as others. The root cause of all this is that a fundamental basic law has yet to be enacted on the national level, and the Provisional Constitution does not offer explicit protection to labor, so that strikes and disturbances run afoul of the security and police laws.
