The working hours at Shanghai in the silk factories are usually from six in the morning to six in the evening, including an hour and a half for meals. In the silk manufactories the little girls earn 1¼d. per day at first, which is increased to 2½d. after a short time. A clever workwoman gets about 9d. In 1891–92 the wages in the same factory, which was then on a very small scale and under a Chinese name, were about 30 per cent. less. In the larger factories the children got 2½d. a day and the women from 6d. to 7d. During the first few months that elapsed after the signing of the Treaty of Shimonosaki salaries were on an average about 5d. As exchange has not varied much since then, the rise is very considerable. ‘The women and children now working in the better factories here,’ says the British Consul at Shanghai in his Report, 1897, ‘can now earn from 10s. to 30s. a month, which is quite a fortune for people who in the native factories rarely make more than 4s. a month, although they work hard all day!’ The same Report observes that in certain branches of industry the Chinese workwomen earn more than would the same class in Italy. The under-manager who took me round one of the Shanghai factories, a Peruvian by birth, and, I fancy, a coloured man by origin, judging from his curly hair and high cheekbones, told me that in his boyhood in Peru he had earned 2½d. a day at the same business, which is what is paid to child-workers in Shanghai. It is, therefore, a distinct mistake to imagine that China is destined to remain the land of low salaries. Some considerable time may elapse before wages reach the high figure obtained in Europe, but there is every prospect that in the course of time a very considerable rise will take place, especially as industry improves, and the demand for skilled labour increases. The Celestials are pretty sure to look after their own interests in the matter by forming trades unions. Strikes are not unknown either in China or Japan.