To Whom It May Concern: We, the bricklayers and carpenters, in order to make a living, have been requesting a slight increase in our wages. Effective June 1st, the rates were set at 34 cents per day for Class A workers and 16 cents per day for Class B workers. However, recently a small group within our trade held a meeting to oppose this arrangement and petitioned the Administrative Office to post an official notice revising the wage scale.  Yet we laborers earn but a few pennies each day by exhausting our very lives and strength to support our families—this is no idle gain nor comparable to other illicit or improper enterprises. Consider, for example, how merchants can raise prices at will without drawing any protest. Why, then, should the meager wages earned through our daylong toil and sweat be so ruthlessly undermined? We see no effective means of resistance at present; all we know is that our daily labor must be compensated at precisely this rate. Though we may not enjoy other rights, we are entitled to freedom of occupation and work—and on this point we swear, come what may, never to yield to any attempt to deprive us. The only course open to us now is to refuse to work for the proposed rates of 34 cents and 16 cents per day. We, the entire union, have resolved not to do so. Hereby we declare.  The Bricklayers and Carpenters of Hunan  August 16th