Record of Conversation between the Masons
and Carpenters and Mr. Wu, Head of the
Political Affairs Department, Together with a
Letter to the Provincial Governor

(October 24, 1922)

The overall circumstances of the petition by the masons and carpenters to the
xian Magistrate's Office has already been reported in yesterday's paper....¹
At ten o'clock yesterday morning, workers from the two trades assembled in
front of the Education Council Plaza....² Mr. Wu, director of the Administration Office, invited the representatives into the director's office where the
various public groups were meeting in the guest hall. After a period of three
hours and several urgent telephone calls from the workers at the council, it was
said that they had not yet reached an agreement. So the workers had no choice
but to go to the xian office to present their petition. The representatives beseeched Director Wu to respond quickly. After repeated attempts at mediation
on Director Wu's part, the meeting finally came to a close at eight o'clock in
the evening, when Director Wu asked those in the two trades to prepare a
formal document requesting freedom to exercise one's trade for approval by
the government. In addition, a record was drafted on the spot by the representatives and reviewed by Director Wu. The public notice of Changsha xian was
declared null and void, and the workers were granted freedom to exercise their
trades. While the representatives took the record to report [to those at the
Education Council], a formal document was drawn up requesting the provincial governor's approval. By this time it was already nine o'clock. Presented
below are the record of the face-to-face conversation between the representatives and Director Wu and the formal document presented to the provincial
government office:³

Record of Conversation

The workers of the masons' and carpenters' trades demand an increase in their
[daily] wage to thirty-four cents, and do not recognize the public notice regarding settlement of their strike issued by the Changsha xian magistrate on the
fourteenth day of the eighth month of the lunar calendar. According to the

This document was published in the Changsha Dagongbao on October 25, 1922. Our
source is Mao Zedong ji. Bujuan, Vol. 9, pp. 137-38.
1. Passage omitted in the Mao Zedong ji.
2. Passage omitted in the Mao Zedong ji.
3. Once again, this introductory paragraph was supplied by the Dagongbao; the record
of the conversations and the letter to the governor are by Mao.