Late Imperial China

LUDDISM AND LABOR PROTEST AMONG SILK ARTISANS AND WORKERS IN JIANGNAN AND GUANGDONG, 1860-1930* Robert Y. Eng Did the development of modern industry during the late Qing and early Republic threaten the livelihood of traditional artisans, and if so, how did the artisans respond? Was the formation of a working class with a social consciousness and propensity to rebel against capitalist exploitation a necessary consequence of modern industrialization in China? This paper seeks to throw light on the above questions through an examination of the impact of the growth of silk-reeling, China's leading export industry, on traditional artisans and on the formation of a new class of workers, and on the extent and nature of their protests. As we shall see, regional differences in industrial location, the function of silk in the local economy, and economic and social organization shaped and conditioned different reactive patterns of artisans and workers to industrialism in Jiangnan and Guangdong, the two leading centers of the modern silk-reeling industry. Curiously, despite their higher level of militarization and politicization, Guangdong male weavers engaged only sporadically in isolated acts of protest while their Jiangnan colleagues erupted violently far more frequently and regularly. Paradoxically, the more radical marriage strategies pursued by Guangdong women workers-delayed transfer marriage and sworn spinterhood1-made them more pliable to factory discipline and less prone to labor disputes than their Shanghai sisters, who practiced the major form of marriage. 'The original draft of this paper was presented at the panel on "Rebels, Workers and Mobs: Evolution of Collective Action in South China, Mid-14th to Mid-20th Century," at the 40th annual meeting of the Association for Asian Studies in San Francisco, in 1988. I would like to thank my fellow panelists, Ming Kou Chan and James Tong and our discussants Guy Alitto and Roger Des Forges for a stimulating session. Charlotte Fürth and three anonymous referees for Late Imperial China provided substantive suggestions for revision , and Liz Perry offered valuable bibliographic and factual information on Shanghai silk workers. I would also like to thank the University of Redlands for research support in the form of summer grants. Any errors in fact or interpretation remain my responsibility. 'For studies of these fascinating phenomena, see Siu 1990, Stockard 1989, Topley 1975, and Chen et al. 1964. The significance of Guangdong marriage customs in labor recruitment and disputes is discussed below. Late Imperial China Vol. 11, No. 2 (December 1990): 63-101© by the Society for Qing Studies 63 64Robert Y. Eng The Organization of the Silk- Weaving Industry of Jiangnan and Guangdong in the Qing Period By the early Qing, silk weaving in the Jiangnan region had divided into a rural sector centered around Lake Tai specializing in low quality fabrics and an urban sector centered principally in Suzhou, Nanjing, and Hangzhou specializing in high quality fabrics.2 In the countryside a putting-out system prevailed: silk fabric brokerages in Zhenze, Danyang, Shaoxing, Shuanglin, Shengze, Puyuan, Dantu and other market towns in Jiangnan supplied raw silk and advanced cash to rural weavers, collecting finished silk piece goods.3 At the urban centers, independent small producers utilizing family and sometimes hired labor, co-existed with wholesale establishments called accounting houses (zhangfang); these accounting houses sometimes directly managed and supervised production but far more often contracted small household-based producers (jihu).4 At the end of the Qing dynasty, the largest of the wholesale silk firms at Nanjing hired as many as 600 weavers.5 At Suzhou in 1913, there were fifty-seven accounting houses employing or subcontracting some 7,700 artisans.6 At Hangzhou during the late Qing and early Republic, the largest silk fabric brokerage (chouzhuang) was Jiang Guangchang, established by two brothers Jiang Tingliang and Jiang Tinggui, who started as weavers with a single loom in 1862 and expanded their capacity to six looms five years later. With their hard-earned profits they established a silk fabric house that came to subcontract as many as five to six hundred weavers. Jiang Tinggui took over the business entirely when his elder brother died childless. He increased the profit margin of Jiang Guangchang through vertical integration by investment in related...