The daily worker. [volume] (Chicago, Ill.) 1924-1958, 1929-06-13

once every month or two. On New
Years Day he issued a newspaper
announcement ordering all heads of
institutions to come to his office in
the morning "for mutual congratu-
lations." Foreigners were to call be-
tween 1 and 8. The joke is that
everybody turned up, as ordered.
Manchurian Officials.
These officials in power in Man
churia are very much like the In
dian princes. They regard public
revenues as their own personal
pocket money; they cultivate the
opium poppy on colossal scale and
maintain great public houses for
smoking; they sell out gambling Ii
censes to the highest bidders. Now,
as before the unification with Nank-
ing, they forbid the formation of
labor or student unions. Even the
Kuomintang cannot exist apart from
them, and the Mukden government
officials have decided that the Of
ficials alone will henceforth consti
tute the Kuomintang Party.
Now, as before the unification,
there is no freedom of the press,
speech, association, or public meet
ing; no labor protection or labor
laws except the unwritten law
against labor; no kind of legisla-
ture bodies. The governor or the po-
lice are the lawyers, judges and
juries all in one, and your right to
live depends upon your ability to
flatter or bride them. Even the re-
quest of Marking for the right to
send men to teach the Manchurian
officials the Three Peoples Princi-
pies of Sun Vat Sen met with re-
fusal, the authorities saying they
would send a commission to Nank-
ing to study them, and only these
authorities could teach in Man
churia.
At the present time in North
Manchuria, however, the attention
of the people is being directed from
such internal conditions to the "Red
menace" The first act of the po-
lice after the unification with Man
churia was to march into the trade
union of the Chinese Eastern Rail-
way and declare it an illegal asso-
citation. They said they found
Communist books" in the union
headquarters. This is always a con-
venient excuse. They perhaps did
find book there, although it might
have been dictionary. This book
is a rare and dangerous object in
Manchuria, thing you really never
find in an upper-class home. The
minute you step into a home where
there are books in a shelf, and mag
azines not a year old, you may know
that it is time to lower your voice
for fear the walls have ears. 1t is
better not to be seen with such a
man in public.
The respectable, Europeanized
Chinese spend their time in other
occupations than reading; they fox
trot all night to the latest Amer
lean music. And all respectable"
people in North Manchuria, Chinese
or foreign, go in for banquets, and
other social affairs in which eating
plays predominant role. But they
don't read. The reading is done
chiefly by the students, who have
little else than their school books,
by the Soviet Russians, and by the
few Chinese with whom it is dam
gerous to be seen in public.
The chief game in Northern Man
churia politics now is to keep the
Chinese and Russians at each others
throats. But when the Russians are
once driven out and the railway
brought under Chinese control, then
the real struggle for the control Of
Manchyria will begin. $r
ATAE END