CHINA: New Technique

Shanghai’s tramway system covers 43 miles, employs 3,000 workers, hauls 450,000 passengers daily, and is managed by salty Scotsman Alexander Pollock for the British-owned Shanghai Electric Construction Co., Ltd. When Scotsman Pollock emerged last August from Japanese internment to take over his old enterprise, he found chaos. Among other things, the blithering enemy had paid all workers, skilled and unskilled, veteran and green, alike. The first job was to re-establish wage scales.

The workers took alarm over a rumor that the company would not pay them at all. In November, led by the powerful new Shanghai General Union, they staged a protest. Since strikes and lockouts are barred by municipal edict, the workers kept the trams running but collected no fares.* Free riding went on for two and a half days. Then the workers blandly said they were sorry, blandly resumed normal collections.

*This was the most significant advance in trolley-strike technique since 1909, when strikebreakers in Philadelphia staged a strike-within-a-strike. Hired on the understanding that they could pocket the fares, the strikebreakers went in for private initiative, insisted on running the cars back & forth on busy, profitable, short-haul streets. Result: chaos on Market Street, no trolleys in Manayunk.