Shanghai Fury by Peter Thompson

Author:Peter Thompson [Thompson, Peter]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Non-Fiction
ISBN: 9781864711851
Publisher: Random House Australia
Published: 2012-04-15T04:00:00+00:00

In Sydney, the memories of women and children labouring in Dickensian conditions in Shanghai factories lingered in the mind of the Australian feminist Eleanor Hinder. After she returned to her duties at Farmer’s department store, she kept in touch with a group of YWCA activists, including Gertrude Owen and Constance Duncan from Australia and Ella MacNeil from New Zealand. Everything in her background spurred her into going back to China and doing something about it.

Eleanor Mary Hinder was born at East Maitland, NSW, on 19 January 1893, third daughter of headmaster John Hinder and his wife Sarah, née Mills. She was educated at Maitland West Girls’ High School, Teachers’ College and the University of Sydney. Having graduated in science, she taught biology at North Sydney Girls’ High School and was active in schemes to improve workers’ education.

In 1919 she joined Farmer & Company as superintendent of women’s welfare in an age when an enlightened and benevolent employer clearly cared for its staff. With Jean Stevenson of the YWCA, she founded the City Girls Amateur Sports Association for competition in seven sports. For Farmer’s girls, many of these activities were conducted from a company cottage in the seaside suburb of Dee Why. Eleanor also campaigned with the National Council for Women to oppose an employers’ move to reduce the basic wage for female workers below the present two pounds one shilling, successfully arguing that any reduction would raise ‘moral and spiritual issues in the lives of women’.

Then in 1926 she took two years’ leave of absence from Farmer’s and returned to Shanghai on a Rockefeller fellowship to work with Lily K. Haas, the YWCA’s industrial secretary. She persuaded the organisation to set up a small house in an alleyway in the silk district of Chapei where she lived with Lily Haas and two Chinese colleagues. ‘She absolutely insisted that they should get near to the factory women and children whose conditions they hoped to better,’ her biographer, Frances Wheelhouse, writes.8

Eleanor took Professor Griffith Taylor, a visiting geographer from the University of Sydney, on a tour of the factories. ‘The first was a large cotton mill, which was probably as well run as any in China,’ he related.

The manager was careful to tell us that no children under 12 years of age were employed. The mill worked in 12-hour shifts day and night, and one wondered how long it would be before modern industrial hours would be enforced in China. There were apparently no safeguards against accidents and no fans to clear the air of the fluff, which soon covered our clothes and is so dangerous to breathe.9

Later the same day Eleanor escorted the professor into a typical silk filature. ‘We ascended a narrow stairway and entered a room so filled with steam that at first nothing was visible,’ he wrote.

As we stumbled along a narrow gangway, babies crawled from beneath our feet towards their mothers. In the centre of the room, the air was clearer and we saw two

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