ABSTRACT
To be forwarded to all publishing houses, labor unions, and other organizations nationwide courtesy of the Beijing Morning News, Workers’ Weekly, Shanghai China Times, Republican Daily, Hankou Jiangsheng ribao, Changsha Dagongbao, and People’s Rule Daily: Our organizations have sent the following telegram to the parliament in Beijing:
To the members of the upper and lower houses of the Parliament of the Republic of China: The world economy changes more rapidly every day, as the consciousness of the working class deepens day by day. The establishment of a worker-peasant state in Soviet Russia is a model for all other countries in the world! We, the laboring people, created civilization with our own hands, but we ourselves have yet to benefit from it. Although the Provisional Constitution of the Republic of China explicitly stipulates that there shall be no class distinctions among the people, the workers, who make up the overwhelming majority of the whole population, not only fail to be protected by law, but instead often suffer its oppression. In all the world of men, is there any injustice graver 1 than this? How fortunate that the movement to establish a labor law now reverberates throughout the land! What courageous and upright person does not rejoice in it? As representatives of the people, you gentlemen surely know that authority in a republic rests with the whole people. To talk of lawmaking without taking into consideration the working class, which constitutes the overwhelming majority [of the population]—would this not amount to abandoning the entire people? Our organizations, in accordance with the four cardinal principles of labor—(1) attainment of political freedom, (2) improvement in living standards, (3) participation in industrial management, and (4) attainment of training and education—thoroughly subscribe to the nineteen articles of the Outline for Labor Legislation put forward by the General Secretariat of Chinese Labor Organizations. We implore you, gentlemen, to uphold justice and fulfill your sacred duty by quickly passing the proposed labor law so that we, the workers, will no longer be a lawless people or have to resort to unlawful activities. What great good fortune [this would create]! Otherwise, you gentlemen will be irrevocably cutting yourselves off from the people, in 121which case we laborers throughout the land will have no choice but to exercise our solemn authority and unite as one to battle for our freedom, for survival, and for the rights to which we are entitled. And we will certainly not recognize any of you as representing the will of the people in drawing up the constitution! Joint statement of the Hunan Branch of the Secretariat of Chinese Labor Organizations, the Guangzhou-Hankou Railroad Workers’ Club of Xinhe, and the Guangzhou-Hankou Railroad Workers’ Club of Yuezhou. We implore each and every one of you to uphold strongly the cause of justice and firmly to support our plea. We await your response most anxiously.
Attached is the Outline of Labor Legislation.
