Indusco Bailie School Collection, 1940-1952

Following the Japanese invasion of China in 1937, the New Zealand expatriate Rewi Alley threw his considerable talents behind the war effort. Having lived and worked in China almost continuously for a decade, Alley was intimately familiar with the country, well traveled, and well connected, including to Mao Zedong and the Communist underground.

After witnessing first hand the devastation of the Japanese assault in Shanghai, Alley gathered a group of eleven like-minded friends at a local restaurant in April 1938 to help organize and support the resistance. The result of that meeting was the formation of the Chinese Industrial Cooperative Movement (CIC), also known as the Gung Ho Movement from the Chinese slogan for "work together." From the outset, the CIC was an ambitious enterprise built upon the chaos of war and, at least initially, it drew support from both Communists and Nationalists. The plan was to establish a network of industrial cooperatives throughout the unoccupied regions of the country, away from the vulnerable coastal cities, mobilizing labor from among the large pool of refugees to produce everything from vehicles to armaments, machinery, clothing, and other durable goods needed for the war effort. With the blessing of the British and Chinese governments, Alley arranged to have factories freighted inland to keep production flowing, engaging the Chinese workers in the gung ho spirit to do the work themselves. To fund the movement, in 1939, Alley's energetic associate Ida Pruitt created Indusco, Inc., as a New York-based fundraising arm of the CIC.

Alley expanded his efforts by founding a series of industrial schools named in honor of his friend, Joseph Bailie, an American missionary. Beginning in 1942 with a school in Shuangshipu, Shaanxi Province, the Bailie Schools proliferated, taking in orphans, refugees, and workers from the cooperatives to teach basic literacy and industrial skills and to build a sense of comradery and commitment to the gung ho ethos. When the Shuangshipu school was relocated in 1944 to Shandan, Gansu Province, to escape Nationalist pressure, Alley went along as headmaster.

The victory of Communist forces in 1949, left Alley's stock as a pro-Communist foreigner at relatively high ebb. Although he was displaced from his position as headmaster at Shandan when the school was reoriented to heavy industry in 1952, Alley remained in China, working as a writer and sometime propagandist for the Communist government. An advocate of international peace, he was a vocal critic of American intervention in Asia during the Korean and Vietnam Wars, and became recognized as one of the elite group of foreign "friends of China." Although he suffered a fall from privilege during the Cultural Revolution, Alley remained in China until his death on Dec. 27, 1987.

Alley's friend and CIC co-founder, Edgar Snow, considered Alley to have been as important to China during the Sino-Japanese War as T.E. Lawrence was to the Arabs during the First World War, "and perhaps more," symbols of active resistance, as much as agents of change. "Where Lawrence brought to Arabia the destructive techniques of guerrilla warfare," Snow wrote, "Alley is teaching China the constructive organisation of guerrilla industry."

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Scope and Contents of the Collection

The Indusco Bailie School Collection includes documents and photographs relating to the establishment and operation of the Bailie Schools in China during the Second World War. Probably associated with the Indusco offices in New York City, these documents include a model constitution for industrial cooperatives, typewritten reports on Bailie Schools, and published articles on the schools' efforts. The reports extend through 1949, and include three mimeographed newsletters from the Shantan Bailie School for the months immediately following the liberation of the school by Communist forces.

Also included are a copy of Alley's book, Yo Banfa! (We Have a Way), printed in Shanghai, 1952, a promotional brochure for the Shantan Bailie School (1949), and eighteen photographs of students and scenes at Bailie Schools taken between 1942 and 1944. Most of these photographs are stamped on the verso: "Indusco, the American Committee in Aid of Chinese Industrial Cooperatives."

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Manuscripts and printed materials 1940-1952

Model constitution for Chinese indusrtrial cooperative societies 1940 July 7 TMs, 13 p.

CIC Appeal for Bailie School -- Technical Training School for Boys in Lanchow, Kansu 1942 Feb. TMsS, 3p.

Signed by Rewi Alley, Hou Yu-Min, and Chang Kuan-Lien

The Bailie School -- Indusco's answer to society 1942 Apr. 14 TMsS, 4p.

Report on 1942 1943 Jan. 12 TMs, 14p.

China's Industrial Future [offprint from Free World 1944 Aug. Offprint, 3p.

For China: Slums or Bretton Woods? [offprint from Ammunition 1945 June Offprint, 2p.

Progress of China's industrial cooperatives: a series of twenty drawings (Shanghai: China Commercial Advertising Agency) 1945 Pam., 20p.

Problem child 1945 TMsS, 3p.

Sandan Bailie School refugee work 1946 Jan. 26 TMs, 6p.

Information Bulletin, vol. 1, no. 8 1946 June 10p.

Tao Memorial Committee for Democratic Education in China Story of Heng-Chih Tao 1946 Dec. 4p.

Report: Chinese industrial cooperatives -- Likiang 1946 June 30 TMs, 10p.

Gung Ho! (s.n.: s.l.) 1947 Pam., 16p.

Shantung cooperatives number more than 8000 1947 TMs, 2p.

Letter to "Friends" 1944 Aug. TLS Cy, 2p.

Newsletter for Sept.-Nov. 1949 1949 Oct.-Nov. Mimeograph: 3, 2, 4p.

Shantan Bailie School 1949 (Hong Kong: Tai Wah Press, 1949) 1949 Pam.

Letter to President Harry S. Truman 1950 Jan. 16 TLS Cy, 2p.

Yo Banfa! (Shanghai: China Monthly Review) 1952 Pam., 193p.

Photographs 1944 18 items

Photograph: Five Bailie School students prepare for a hike with Andrew Braid, Friends Ambulance Unit member loaned to the Bailie School work of the CIC. The boys spent 3 days investigating a river-bed [illeg.] and local industries 1944 8x10"

Photograph: [Chinese boy with mallet] 1944 8x10"

Photograph: [Chinese boys brushing teeth] 1944 8x10"

Photograph: These 4 Kanhsien Bailie School boys are from the Christian Herald Orphanage in Foochow, Fukien 1944 8x10"

Photograph: [Chinese boy and girl working with loom] 1944 8x10"

Photograph: Mechanics students at a Bailie School try a hand at their new ste4am engine. Shuangshihpu, Shensi 1944 8x10"

Photograph: Bailie Technical School boys with masks they have made -- Northwest 1944 8x10"

Photograph: [Bailie Technical School making masks] 1944 8x10"

Photograph: Bailie School in Chengdu [boy in uniform standing behind boy with rabbit] 1944 8x10"

Photograph: Bailie School in Chengdu [five boys in uniform with Andrew Braid(?)] 1944 8x10"

Photograph: Bailie School in Chengdu [boys in uniform shaking hands] 1944 8x10"

Photograph: [Bailie School in Chengdu: three boys in uniform with Rewi Alley(?)] 1944 8x10"

Photograph: [Bailie School in Chengdu: group shot with students and instructors: Rewi Alley seated third from left, Andrew Braid fourth from left] 1944 8x10"

Photograph: Bailie School in Chengdu [boys in uniform pointing at artwork] 1944 8x10"

Photograph: A point well made. . . fellow students of this Chinese Bailie School member applaud his proposal. These boys will learn to become mechanics, leather and textile experts and will become cadre forces for future cooperatives 1944 8x10"

Photograph: [Group standing around donkey cart, raising fists in celebration] 1944 8x10"

Photograph: Shuangshipu School which has been endowed by the Amalgamated Clothing Workers Union 1944 8x10"

Photograph: Planting [illeg.] teazels 1944 8x10"