Indusco Bailie School Collection

1940-1952
1 box (0.25 linear ft.)
Call no.: MS 564
rotating decorative images from SCUA collections

Following the Japanese invasion of China in 1937, the New Zealand expatriate Rewi Alley threw his considerable talents behind the war effort. Building upon knowledge acquired over a decade of living in China, Alley helped organize the Chinese Industrial Cooperative Movement (CIC). The CIC coordinated the creation of industrial cooperatives throughout unoccupied China to keep industrial production flowing, and it sponsored a series of industrial schools named after Alley's friend Joseph Bailie to provide training and support.



The Indusco Bailie School Collection includes documents and photographs relating to the establishment and operation of the Bailie Schools in China during and immediately after 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 describing the schools' efforts. The reports extend through 1949, and include three mimeographed newsletters from the Shantan Bailie School for the months immediately following the school's liberation by Communist forces. Also included are printed works by Alley and eighteen photographs taken between 1942 and 1944 of students and scenes at Bailie Schools.

See similar SCUA collections:

Background on Indusco Bailie School


An image of: Bailie Technical School boys with masks

Bailie Technical School boys with masks

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."

Scope of 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."

Inventory

Manuscripts and printed materials
1940-1952
Indusco: Model constitution for Chinese indusrtrial cooperative societies
1940 July 7
TMs, 13 p.
Folder 1
Indusco: CIC Appeal for Bailie School -- Technical Training School for Boys in Lanchow, Kansu
1942 Feb.
TMsS, 3p.
Folder 2

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

Li-Shoo, T'ung: The Bailie School -- Indusco's answer to society
1942 Apr. 14
TMsS, 4p.
Folder 3
Shuangshipu Bailie School: Report on 1942
1943 Jan. 12
TMs, 14p.
Folder 4
Alley, Rewi: China's Industrial Future [offprint from Free World
1944 Aug.
Offprint, 3p.
Folder 5
Snow, Edgar: For China: Slums or Bretton Woods? [offprint from Ammunition
1945 June
Offprint, 2p.
Folder 6
Chen, Jack, 1908- .: Progress of China's industrial cooperatives: a series of twenty drawings (Shanghai: China Commercial Advertising Agency)
ca.1945
Pam., 20p.
Folder 7
Hogg, George A.: Problem child
ca.1945
TMsS, 3p.
Folder 8
Indusco.: Sandan Bailie School refugee work
1946 Jan. 26
TMs, 6p.
Folder 9
Committee for a Democratic Far Eastern Policy: Information Bulletin, vol. 1, no. 8
1946 June
10p.
Folder 10
Tao Memorial Committee for Democratic Education in China Story of Heng-Chih Tao
1946 Dec.
4p.
Folder 11
Indusco: Report: Chinese industrial cooperatives -- Likiang
1946 June 30
TMs, 10p.
Folder 12
Gung Ho! (s.n.: s.l.)
ca.1947
Pam., 16p.
Folder 13
Indusco: Shantung cooperatives number more than 8000
ca.1947
TMs, 2p.
Folder 14
Alley, Rewi: Letter to "Friends"
1944 Aug.
TLS Cy, 2p.
Folder 15
Shantan Bailie School: Newsletter for Sept.-Nov. 1949
1949 Oct.-Nov.
Mimeograph: 3, 2, 4p.
Folder 16
Shantan Bailie School 1949 (Hong Kong: Tai Wah Press, 1949)
1949
Pam.
Folder 17
Pickett, Clarence E. (American Friends Service Committee): Letter to President Harry S. Truman
1950 Jan. 16
TLS Cy, 2p.
Folder 18
Alley, Rewi: Yo Banfa! (Shanghai: China Monthly Review)
1952
Pam., 193p.
Folder 19
Photographs
ca.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
ca.1944
8x10"
Folder 20
Five Bailie School students prepare for a hike with Andrew Braid...
Photograph: [Chinese boy with mallet]
ca.1944
8x10"
Folder 20
[Chinese boy with mallet]
Photograph: [Chinese boys brushing teeth]
ca.1944
8x10"
Folder 20
[Chinese boys brushing teeth]
Photograph: These 4 Kanhsien Bailie School boys are from the Christian Herald Orphanage in Foochow, Fukien
ca.1944
8x10"
Folder 21
These four Kanhsien Bailie School boys. . .
Photograph: [Chinese boy and girl working with loom]
ca.1944
8x10"
Folder 21
[Chinese boy and girl working with loom]
Photograph: Mechanics students at a Bailie School try a hand at their new steam engine. Shuangshihpu, Shensi
ca.1944
8x10"
Folder 21
Mechanics students at a Bailie School. . .
Photograph: Bailie Technical School boys with masks they have made -- Northwest
ca.1944
8x10"
Folder 22
Bailie Technical School boys with masks
Photograph: [Bailie Technical School making masks]
ca.1944
8x10"
Folder 22
[Bailie Technical School making masks]
Photograph: Bailie School in Chengdu [boy in uniform standing behind boy with rabbit]
ca.1944
8x10"
Folder 23
Bailie School in Chengdu [boy in uniform standing behind boy with rabbit]
Photograph: Bailie School in Chengdu [five boys in uniform with Andrew Braid(?)]
ca.1944
8x10"
Folder 23
Bailie School in Chengdu [five boys in uniform with Andrew Braid(?)]
Photograph: Bailie School in Chengdu [boys in uniform shaking hands]
ca.1944
8x10"
Folder 23
Bailie School in Chengdu [boys in uniform shaking hands]
Photograph: [Bailie School in Chengdu: three boys in uniform with Rewi Alley(?)]
ca.1944
8x10"
Folder 23
[Bailie School in Chengdu: three boys in uniform with Rewi Alley(?)]
Photograph: [Bailie School in Chengdu: group shot with students and instructors: Rewi Alley seated third from left, Andrew Braid fourth from left]
ca.1944
8x10"
Folder 23
[Bailie School in Chengdu: group shot with students and instructors: Rewi Alley seated third from left, Andrew Braid fourth from left]
Photograph: Bailie School in Chengdu [boys in uniform pointing at artwork]
ca.1944
8x10"
Folder 23
Bailie School in Chengdu [boys in uniform pointing at  artwork]
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
ca.1944
8x10"
Folder 24
A point well made. . .
Photograph: [Group standing around donkey cart, raising fists in celebration]
ca.1944
8x10"
Folder 24
[Group standing around donkey cart, raising fists in celebration]
Photograph: Shuangshipu School which has been endowed by the Amalgamated Clothing Workers Union
ca.1944
8x10"
Folder 24
Shuangshipu School which has been endowed by the Amalgamated Clothing Workers Union
Photograph: Planting [illeg.] teazels
ca.1944
8x10"
Folder 24
Planting [illeg.] teazels

Administrative information

Access

The collection is open for research.

Provenance

Gift of James and Sibylle Fraser, October 2007.

Processing Information

Processed by Dexter Haven, June 2008.

Digitized content

Selected material in the collection has been scanned and are available online through our digital repository, Credo.

Language:

English

Copyright and Use (More information )

Cite as: Indusco Bailie School Collection (MS 564). Special Collections and University Archives, University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries.

Search terms

Subjects

  • China--History--1937-1949.
  • Chinese industrial cooperatives.
  • Cooperative societies--China.
  • Shantan Bailie School (Kansu, China).
  • Sino-Japanese War, 1937-1945
  • World War, 1939-1945.

Contributors

  • Indusco [main entry]
  • Alley, Rewi, 1897-1897.

Genres and formats

  • Photographs.

Link to similar SCUA collections