Research On Textile Workers In Modern Qingdao (1914-1937

After the Japanese invades Qingdao in World War Ⅰ,the development of the textile industry was an important means of economic aggression,and since then the textile industry in Qingdao developed rapidly,By July 1936,the textile industry in Qingdao had a "nine-to-one" situation of nine Japanese yarn factories represented by Dakang yarn factory and Chinese-funded yarn factories represented by Huaxin yarn factory,accounting for more than half of the total number of workers in Qingdao.The textile factories absorbed a large number of peasants and traditional craftsmen from the suburbs of Qingdao and the Shandong hinterland,and due to the long-standing and persistent foot-binding custom in Shandong and the gender composition of Qingdao as a city of immigrants,the textile industry in Qingdao maintained a situation of "male-heavy" for a long period of time,which was different from that of the 1910 s and 1920 s.Compared with the gender composition of textile workers in Shanghai and Tianjin during the same period in the 1910 s and 1920 s,it had significant regional characteristics.The modern Qingdao textile factory established unified rules of conduct among workers through labor contracts to regulate and standardize their behavior,make them obey factory orders and ensure normal production,and manage,control and discipline them through three labor systems: contract labor system,contract body system and foster labor system.The factory set up a clear work and rest schedule to establish the workers’ concept of time,and the daily working hours of workers in modern Qingdao yarn factory were generally 12 hours,and the production and life of workers were controlled by the factory.In addition to production and life,the factory provided dormitories for workers,turning the dormitories into an extension of the factory,so that factory management penetrated into the daily life of workers,thus improving the attendance of workers,ensuring the accuracy of working hours,and facilitating supervision and management.The factory makes reasonable use of the reward and punishment mechanism of life and wage income to mobilize the production enthusiasm of the workers and achieve the purpose of promoting the growth of the factory production efficiency.Due to the limited income of textile workers,In Qingdao,the workers are only in the middle-income level,the high price of goods in Qingdao,and the cruel exploitation of Japanese yarn factory owners,the daily life of textile workers in Qingdao in modern times was rather monotonous,with difficult living conditions such as clothing,food,and housing,and they could only participate in some low-cost entertainment activities in their limited leisure time.The difficult living conditions forced the textile workers to struggle and achieve certain results.The textile workers in modern Qingdao show the process of identity transformation from traditional peasants to modern workers and their daily production and life in the context of the drastic changes in traditional social structure,which provides a certain reference for the in-depth understanding of urbanization in modern Qingdao and the study of regional social history.