Secondly, the proclamation of manifold programs has the effect, obviously, of drawing attention to each of them. The Kuomintang, anxious to retain its paramountcy, promotes new local government changes. These face frustration by mass illiteracy. Mass education is impeded by local economic injustices. The Whampoa and _Erh Ch'ên_ groups in the Kuomintang, while they have landlord connections, are interested--even assuming a strong economic-class interest--in the maintenance of government. Action is appearing, slow and haphazard by Western standards, but indisputably present. The minimum of good government in China is a very low minimum, but it is rising in the face of the Communist and Japanese pressure. One may be sure that the National Government will not pass below that minimum if the state's existence is in danger. Thirdly, there is a very genuine boom condition in Western China. The movement of the government to the West, and lightening of intolerable but long-endured _tuchün_ exactions, would in itself have led to sudden prosperity. To this are added more than twenty millions of new population, a growing network of communications, a sharp but controlled inflation. These further stimulate speculation and construction and development. The most important factors in a new prosperity have been, however, the reappearance of handicraft-type industry as a consequence of blockade, and governmental advocacy of every conceivable development. The author beheld, during the summer of 1940, conditions of prosperity in Szechwan which he had not expected to find in China within the space of one lifetime. Narcotics were eradicated. The working population was commanding high wages, but suffering from high prices; the prices were somewhat ahead of the wages, but not so far that social morale was troubled. Skilled labor was in a superb bargaining position; chauffeurs, electricians, good carpenters, etc. were in considerable demand. The salaried classes were suffering at all levels, a factor which was patently wholesome in stimulating working-class morale. The clerical class, which had held itself aloof from manual labor with a persistence which boded ill for China, was placed more nearly on a par with its American equivalent. While poverty was still universal by Western standards, the pathological squalor endemic to the coast was nowhere visible. THE CHINESE INDUSTRIAL COOPERATIVES