occasional laconic telegram which only deepened the feeling of isolation. Every day the atmosphere of civil war intensified. More desperate struggles were occurring all about us; where open struggle was not occurring, the tension was almost worse than violent battle. What was going on in Hankow, Shanghai, Canton? What were the foreign powers doing? What was coming out of this chaos of wild struggle?
Down the river, the main highway for a province of 25 million population, we came to the city of Kianfu. An ancient sprawling city of three-quarters of a million people, Kianfu seems at first sight to be a piece of ancient China preserved unchanged from the days when Britons still went about in undressed skins and wielded stone clubs. Only some electric lights gave a modern touch. The only modern industrial workers in the city are the 19 men who run the electric light plant; otherwise, the economic structure of the city seems at first inspection to come unchanged thru the thousands of years. Had the revolution penetrated Kianfu?
It had, with a vengeance! In spite of the fact that in the entire city there were only 19 workers in modern industry (workers in the electric light plant) yet this city was entirely under the control of the left wing of the Kuomintang, having a Communist magistrate and protected by an army garrison of which the officers were all left wingers of the Kuomintang or Communists. The mass organization basis for this left government consisted of the trade unions of coolies and artisans (handicraft workers) and the peasant unions. This was the only spot we found in China which was completely left wing. Everywhere else control was either in the hands of the right wing or of a combination of left wing and wavering centrist elements. I emphasize this situation in Kianfu because it is the best concrete instance that I know of to illustrate the revolutionary role of those sections of the proletariat (coolies and artisans) who have as yet been affected by modern industry only in a negative way. Kianfu was a revolutionary oasis in a desert of counter-revolution in the province, so far as governmental power was concerned.
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