Marx in Kalgan

Kalgan has replaced Yenan as the center of Communist China. TIME Correspondent William Gray examined Kalgan, cabled:

China's Great Wall, crumbling on dry brown ridges above this dusty city, has never witnessed such doings as it sees these days in Inner Mongolia's ancient commercial capital. Half modernized by the Japanese, Kalgan has become in five months the laboratory of Chinese Communist industry.

From the Japanese and their puppets, the Communists took over properties roughly valued at $15,000,000, as well as some 300 kilometers of the Peiping-Suiyuan Railroad. They have reopened two flour mills, and factories making cigarets, matches, soap, porcelain, lacquer, varnish and even artificial eyes.

"Suffer the Children." I visited three Kalgan factories with a serene revolutionary, Professor Lin Tse-ming, onetime biologist at Peiping's U.S.-sponsored Yen-ching University and now Director of Studies at North China Union University. They were clean and running smoothly.

The match factory looked misleadingly like a progressive school in New York's Chinatown. It was manned almost entirely by children. Girls and boys of eight, nine and ten pasted or stuffed match boxes with the automatic movements of Charlie Chaplin on the assembly line in Modern Times. They work fast because their pay is based on the incentive system. Maximum earnings are equivalent to ten U.S. dollars monthly.

A girl, who sat facing a picture of Communist Chairman Mao Tse-tung as she pasted boxes, had worked here three years. "She started learning to read and write after the Eighth Route Army came," said Professor Lin. The Communists, he explained, give these children one hour of schooling after work each day. How much had this child learned? Professor Lin questioned her, then turned with a puzzled look and said: "She says she hasn't learned at all." He smiled and added, "She is shy."

Professor Lin found our surprise at the use of child labor somewhat embarrassing: "The standards of China cannot be measured by the standards of America. It is unhealthy for children to work this way. It is also unhealthy not to eat."

"Love the Machinery." Unions have been organized since the Communists took Kalgan. At the rubber factory, which makes bicycle tires and rubber boots and repairs automobile tires, I met the union chairman, Hsu Ping-yan, 48. He had posted this sign: "All members of the union must obey. . . . Keep everything in order and love the public's machinery and instruments as yourself. No smoking allowed. No rest in working time."

Could the unions strike?

Replied Lin: "Yes, if management does not treat them in a democratic way."

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