Regarding the inverted calamity of Hunan and the people having no one to rely on, urgently pleading for the removal and punishment of the Hunan Governor, to uphold the laws of the nation and to save the lives of the people.
We humbly state that for successive years, Hunan province has repeatedly suffered tragic calamities.
Since the former governor Tang Xiangming massacred the people and plundered wealth and property, the people of Hunan have long harbored resentment that could not be redressed.
With the uprising in Lingling, the entire province was trapped by soldiers.
In the fourth month of the seventh year, Zhang Jingyao arrived in Hunan, and the people of Hunan were thereupon plunged into a state of eternal damnation from which they could not recover.
We now request to briefly state the facts of Governor Zhang's calamitous rule in Hunan and the suffering endured by the people of Hunan, for the government's discerning examination.
After the fifth month of the seventh year, the ten thousand households of the entire city of Liling were almost completely burned down, the fire extending to the four surrounding townships and taking a full ten days to be extinguished; in the town of Zhuzhou, several thousand merchant households suffered the same catastrophe; in the battle of Huangtuling in Youxian, those who were raped to death were so numerous that female corpses filled the mountains, and the number of people killed reached tens of thousands.
And the plunder by soldiers was ubiquitous, with no land left untouched.
The people were displaced and have not yet returned; the dead cannot be buried, and the living have no home to return to.
In places like Yuezhou and Baoqing, most areas were burned to ruins, with nine out of ten houses empty, a sight too cruel to behold.
Yet this might still be excused as the abnormalities of wartime and the difficulty of controlling distant regions.
In the single city of Changsha, where the military headquarters is stationed, robberies in broad daylight occur every single day.
His younger brother, Zhang Jingtang, forcibly purchased merchants' goods without paying a single cent, and such incidents are especially frequent.
And the countryside clearing teams he dispatched, upon capturing bandits in the countryside, would invariably detain their relatives or the *tuanbao* for ransom; for each person ransomed, they extorted from one thousand to several thousand yuan.
All of this can be substantiated with evidence.
The people, desolate after the chaos, suffer again from this extortion; they sell their wives and children but still cannot meet the demands, while brutal soldiers in groups of three or five go down to the countryside to search, running rampant through the villages, with not a single day of peace.
For all these consequences of indulging the soldiers to harm the people, such that farmers cannot farm and merchants cannot trade, this is his first crime.
Hunan province has long established the Hunan Bank, circulating paper currency.
Upon his arrival in Hunan, Governor Zhang abolished the Hunan Bank and established the Yuxiang Bank to absorb cash.
His younger brother, Jingtang, further established the Rixin Bank to manipulate the market, shipping copper yuan to Hankou and reaping immeasurable profits.
Governor Zhang also rendered the more than forty million yuan of Hunan Bank paper currency completely void and useless, established the Huimin Lottery, and ordered all counties to distribute tickets to collect the Hunan Bank paper currency and to compel the purchase with cash.
When the lottery was drawn, many of the common people who won were not paid their prizes.
As a result, the cash that the people of Hunan once held has all been absorbed, and the paper currency they possessed has all been voided.
The financial system is exhausted, and they have no means to live.
This is his second crime.
The Shuikoushan lead mine in Hunan was secretly mortgaged by the Hunan Governor to foreigners, and he also mortgaged the white lead refinery to American merchants, obtaining 1.4 million silver dollars.
Furthermore, he signed a contract with the Englishman Grant to mortgage the entire province's mineral resources for thirty million yuan, which has been repeatedly opposed by the people of Hunan through letters and telegrams.
The Hunan Cotton Mill was auctioned to Tianjin merchants for a price of 1.5 million yuan.
The lake-fields of the Hunan Bank were also sold off, for a price of 1.1 million yuan.
Public and private assets are bankrupt, with no prospect of recovery.
This is his third crime.
The prohibition of opium in Hunan province has always been strict, and since the founding of the Republic, its consumption and cultivation had been nearly eradicated.
Governor Zhang has a deep addiction to opium; at the military headquarters, from top to bottom, and among the generals and soldiers under his command, the majority are addicted, and it has become a common practice, greatly undermining the opium prohibition.
More recently, he has coerced the people to plant opium, requiring forty *mu* of opium to be planted for every hundred *mu* of farmland, levying a tax of twenty yuan per *mu*. In Changsha county alone, up to forty thousand packets of opium seeds have been distributed.
Recently, at the Nianyutao station in Wuchang, forty-five bags of opium seeds shipped by Governor Zhang from Fengtian were seized.
Despite repeated petitions from various parties, protests from foreigners, and condemnation from the entire nation, Governor Zhang still forcibly had them shipped away.
If this continues, not only will the harm of opium in Hunan be endless, but it will also involve foreign relations, damage the nation's dignity, and become a laughingstock for the entire world.
This is his fourth crime.
Since Governor Zhang took office, all education funds in Hunan have been reduced.
He also appropriated the seniority-based salary increase fund for primary school teachers, which was established during former Governor Tan's tenure, to offset payments, sometimes at forty or sixty percent of the original amount.
Since the first month of the eighth year, not a single cent has been given.
By the tenth month, teachers from all schools, due to the long delay in the issuance of funds, declared a strike.
Governor Zhang then unscrupulously slandered them, and also besieged and beat students and expelled personnel from the education sector, leading to a province-wide school strike.
Furthermore, since Governor Zhang's arrival in Hunan, he has stationed troops in various schools, occupying buildings and damaging instruments, leaving students with no schools to enter and no education to seek.
This is his fifth crime.
It has long been widely reported in the newspapers that when troops under Governor Zhang's command commit crimes, he has had them handed over by foreigners, only to substitute innocent people of Hunan for execution.
In the seventh month, Wu Canhuang of Hunan and his friend Cheng Peng traveled from Shanghai to Hunan and stayed at the Chuanshan School.
Because Wu was a delegate to the National People's Convention in Shanghai, Governor Zhang dispatched his adopted son, Zhang Jizhong, to lead soldiers to break in during the night and hack both men to death with random sword blows.
To assassinate a citizen is to personally violate the criminal law.
This is his sixth crime.
The "Da Gong Bao" and "Hunan Gong Bao" in Changsha were twice shut down for upholding public opinion.
The "Xiangjiang Review," published by the Student Union for academic research, was also shut down.
Weekly publications from various schools were also banned.
The people of Hunan swallow their sorrow and drink their hatred, none daring to speak out.
Freedom of speech has been utterly swept away.
This is his seventh crime.
Governor Zhang illicitly transported several thousand bags of private salt, which were seized by the Beijing-Hankou Railway, as can be proven by Ministry telegrams.
Furthermore, for each bag of salt on the Hunan riverbanks, he added a salt tax of one yuan, plus an additional three yuan for passport and escort fees, causing the price of salt to rise sharply, forcing the common people to eat bland food.
To sabotage the salt laws is to show contempt for the central government.
This is his eighth crime.
Governor Zhang extorted the gentry and people of the provincial capital and various counties to supply funds for his army, often amounting to tens of millions.
In Xiangxiang county alone, he extorted a military contribution of up to fifty thousand *shi* of rice.
He also once coerced the people to provide one million *shi* of rice to be privately shipped to Tianjin and sold to the Japanese, which was repeatedly resisted by the Hunan gentry, as confirmed by letters and telegrams.
He also forcibly seized the Huasheng steamship of the China Merchants' Steam Navigation Company, and, claiming it was for a meritorious official, renamed it Xunhua and took it as his own.
For the land tax in various counties, he added a surcharge of two to five *jiao* for every yuan, and in some cases, doubled the collection.
Livelihoods are desolate after the war, and the income from the people's fields is not enough to pay the regular taxes, yet Governor Zhang sits and collects his fat bribes, disregarding the people's suffering.
This is his ninth crime.
In Hunan, Governor Zhang only has jurisdiction over a dozen or so counties, yet with these dozen or so counties, he falsely claimed to represent all seventy-plus counties of the province, fabricated an electorate, and held a new election for the Provincial Assembly, an election that was opposed by the people of Hunan through public telegrams.
Furthermore, the Provincial Education Association, originally a civic organization, was due for its own election, but Governor Zhang appointed an official to manage it, making it a fait accompli.
The former president of the Provincial Agricultural Association was overthrown by him.
He fabricated public opinion and destroyed organizations for his own use.
This is his tenth crime.
These ten crimes are but the major points.
The details can be verified in books such as "A Brief Account of the Hunan Disaster," "A Brief Account of the Burning of Liling by Soldiers," "A Brief Account of the Burning of Baoqing by Soldiers," and "Hunan Monthly," as well as in the repeated petitions, letters, and telegrams from the provincial gentry, the Hunan Rehabilitation Association, and student representatives.
We humbly submit that Governor Zhang's calamitous rule in Hunan is a crime of the utmost gravity, and the suffering of the people of Hunan is as deep as fire and water.
As long as Governor Zhang does not leave Hunan for a single day, the people of Hunan will have no one to entrust their lives to for a single day.
If the government still regards Hunan province as the territory of the Republic of China, and the people of Hunan as the people of the Republic of China, then the duty to remove the tyrant and save the people naturally exists.
Therefore, we have detailed the aforementioned situation and urgently plead with the Great President (Your Excellency's Cabinet) to swiftly remove the Hunan Governor Zhang Jingyao from his post and recall him to Beijing, to be punished to the full extent of the law, and to appoint a worthy and capable person to succeed him, so as to save the lives of the people.
We await your command with the utmost urgency.
Respectfully submitted to the Great President (Premier of the State Council). Submitted by citizens from all circles of Hunan: Chen Shaoxiu, Peng Jing, Mao Zedong, Zhang Huai, Luo Zonghan, Yang Shuda, Luo Jiaoduo, Wu Xiaoshan, Zhu Jianji, Zhou Junnan, Li Fengchi, Zeng Jiasheng, Luo Gang (and many other signatories, omitted below).

Shanghai *Minguo Ribao* (Republic Daily), 1920.1.19 (From *Hunan People Accuse Zhang Jingyao of Ten Great Crimes*, in *Selected Historical Materials on the May Fourth Movement in Shanghai*, Shanghai People's Publishing House, 1960.6)