The Publishers' Weekly, Vol. 127, no. 17, April 27, 1935.
At ten o’clock in the morning of January 29, 1932, three Japanese bombing planes came winging out of the sky over Chapei, circled and wheeled about for a time in the neighborhood of the Commercial Press and then, to the utter amazement of the Chinese who stood watching their movements, dropped six explosive shells into the main buildings. By three o’clock in the afternoon the largest printing plant in the world was ablaze. The Chinese Government made furious protest; and much has since been said, pro and con. But one thing is certain. The destruction of the plant was complete. A military maneuver it was entirely successful
Fighting continued in the vicinity
of the plant for months, and no real effort at salvage was attempted until the
withdrawal of the Japanese troops in June. On January 29, 1933, the Press
printed 32-page pamphlet entitled “One Year of Rehabilitation of the Commercial
Press, Ltd.” By Francis K, Pan, D.C.S. A panoramic frontispiece gives a view of
the Press before the destruction. Six following illustrations are – Remains
of Plant No. 1 and the Old Head Office (two shattered walls at right
angles, seeming holding each other); Section of the Letterpress Room
(six or seven presses almost covered with twisted girders, bricks and plaster);
Book Godown (warehouse) in Complete Ruins (not a book was saved); The
Oriental Library on Fire*[1]
(housing the Editorial Department of the Commercial Press and just across
Paoshan Road from the other buildings. First editions dating as far back as the
Sung Dynasty and the complete collection of Yen Fung Lau classics were
altogether lost to the flames); photographic portraits of Dr. Chang Yuen Chi,
Chairman of the Board of Directors, and Mr. Y. W. Wong, Managing Director. Then
follow 26 pages of text, a more-or-less matter-of-fact record of what had been
accomplished in one year. The loss and the dame amount to $16,000,000*[2],
3700 employees had no work and lost, many of them, their neighboring homes in
the bombardment. Nevertheless this plain story of salvage and reorganization is
an unconscious tribute, every word of it, to Chinese stolidity, Chinese
courage, Chinese persistence, Chinese philosophy or Chinese character, however
one wants to put it.
We were taken from the main office
at Honan Road, to see the work being done on the buildings at Chapei. Many of
the buildings, too dangerously damaged, were torn down altogether, and the
bricks used for new walls. Others were re-girded, patched up where needed,
plastered and gleamed like new. We (p. 1671) stood on one floor – a shambles –
little different from what it appeared after the destruction. We ascended a
flight of stairs to see a group of workmen putting the finishing touches to a
floor, completely done over. But the most amazing reclamation was that of the
machinery. I said the Press was completely destroyed. So it seemed, but that is
not literally true. One tiny mark was overlooked, or missed, by the otherwise
thorough marksmen – the machine shop. This was most fortunate, for it permitted
the repair work to proceed from the original headquarters. Result – printing
presses, cutting, sewing, casing machines and other function I could not
determine, once gruesomely smashed and twisted, now stand nicely greased,
covered with tarpaulins and ready for work! So much for calamity and how to
face it.
The Press was founded, under its
present name, in February, 1896, by the late Z. F. How, Y. U. Bau and Y. C.
Bau. There were practical printers and commenced operations with two presses in
an alley-way off Kiangse Road. Two years later they moved to a twelve-room
house on Peking Road.
At this point, realizing the job I
had on my hands, I asked if it would be possible for me to get a brief typewritten
history of the company’s progress together with a detailed account of its
present departments rather than depend on memory and scratch notes. It arrived
the next day. Here it is, carrying on from the house on Peking Road:
In 1902, a new printing
establishment was built on North Fukien Road, with a separate business office
on Honan Road. In 1903, an editorial department was established on Boone Road. In
1905, the plant was moved to the present site on Paoshan Road. Buildings were
completed fort the printing and editorial departments. In 1906, a sales
building on Honan Road was completed. In 1923, an up-to-date, spacious,
reenforced concrete printing building was added to the plant, besides several
smaller buildings in 1924, the Library and Editorial Building was completed.
The management of the company
consists of a board of thirteen directors and three auditors elected annually
by shareholders. One managing director and two managers, together with their
staff in the Head Office, supervise the activities of the company, which are
grouped under the function control of editorial, sales, and works divisions.
The company maintains two branch
printing works in Peiping and Hongkong, more than thirty branch offices, and
over a thousand agencies throughout China and in foreign countries where
Chinese colonies are found.
Editorial Division: The Editorial
Division, which was composed of a few translators in 1903 on Boone Road, now
employs about three hundred scholars who devote their whole time to writing
text-books, translating foreign books, editing and compiling magazines and
other publications. Manuscripts are also accepted from outside authors and
translators who are versed in the knowledge of various sciences. Books on all
subjects, such as ethics, politics, economics, history, geography, science,
mathematics, languages, dictionaries, and encyclopedias, have been published. Up
to February, 1930, there were already more than 30,000 books in Chinese and
other languages to the credit of the company, besides a few hundred more in the
press and under preparation.
It has also been the policy of the
editors to preserve and popularize the rare limited editions of Chinese
classics, besides publishing modern works. “The Treasury of Chinese Classics” –
a collection of more than eighty-five hundred volumes of rare editions of
Chinese classics – was reproduced by the
lithographic process in 1920 and hailed by Chinese scholars at home and abroad.
“The Complete Library” – a
collection of books published by the Company sufficient in itself to constitute
a nucleus for any public library – was issued in 1929 under the editorship of
Y. W. Wong, the present managing director, for a nominal price. It is a
monument to the publishing success of the Company and a distinct contribution
to popular education in China.
Sales Division: The Sales Division,
located on Honan Road, Shanghai, occupies a four-storied reenforced concrete
building with spacious rooms and modern equipment. In addition to the thousands
of its own publications, it sells imported books, stationery, scientific
apparatus, athletic goods, and various other educational supplies. The ground
floor is largely occupied by the company’s own publications. Scientific
apparatus, educational supplies, and imported books occupy the first floor. The
second floor is used partly for offices and partly for storerooms. A dining
room, capable of accommodating about three hundred employees, is found on the
third (1672)
One of the damaged printing buildings of the Commercial Press, Shanghai. Two-fifths of the building is under repair, the other three-fifths is still in a damaged condition.
floor. The building also has a roof garden for the
recreation of employees.
Works
Division: The printing plant occupies about twenty acres of land on Paoshan
Road and consists of ten large and thirteen small modern buildings with a floor
area of five hundred thousand square feet. All buildings are well lighted and
ventilated. Electric lights, filtered water, and a drainage system keep them in
sanitary condition. The whole plant is internally connected by an automatic
telephone system. A twenty-thousand-gallon water tank of reenforced concrete,
connected with an artesian well, furnishes the plant with water. There are more
than three thousand employees, including four hundred women, in the plant. The
company, besides these employees, engages many outside bookbinding
establishments on contract.
The
Letterpress Room and Bindery are located in one building. In the Letterpress
Room are found eighty American and English-made machines, including a battery
of over forty color Miehle presses, two-color Miehle presses, Miehle
perfectors, and a few German machines. Several rotary printing machines are
used for the production of millions of text-books every year. These are the
first rotary machines ever introduced into China for bookwork.
The
Bindery is equipped with many up-to-date automatic wire stitchers, sewing,
folding, cover-making, casing-in, embossing, backing, pressing, ruling, and
Juengst gathering, stitching, and straight-line covering machines. Most of the
women employees of the company work in this room. The making of printing
rollers and electrotype plates and type casting are done in another building.
Dozens of automatic type caster are engaged in making font types in various
sizes in Chinese, English, Russian, Japanese, Hebrew, or German, including different
kinds of fancy types.
The
main building houses the offices of the works, the photo-engraving,
lithographic printing, rotogravure, and art departments. The Lithographic Room
is equipped with dozens of two-color Mann offset presses, Harris automatic
offset presses, aluminum manchines, bronzing and dusting machines , and
flat-bed presses. Rare Chinese paintings and calendars, labels, posters, etc.,
are reproduced and printed here by the million every year.
The
Photo-Engraving Room is well lighted and completely fitted to do all kinds of
half-tone, zinc-etching, collotyping, three-color, and hydrographic mapwork.
Arc lamp, acid-blast etching machines, routing, beveling, and cutting machines
are used. A camera, one of the largest in the world, makes possible the
production of maps and charts in one section by photography. (p. 1673)
The
Machine Shop, located in another building, is equipped with drilling, slotting,
planning, and shaping machines, and two “Milwaukee” Universal milling machines,
a heavy grinding machine, a heavy-duty planer, and a 36” diameter lathe,
besides other lathes. Various types of printing presses are manufactured here
for the use of job printings all over China.
The
Educational Supply Department undertakes the manufacture of all sorts of
physical and chemical apparatus for schools and laboratories, including
kindergarten materials.
The
Chinese typewriter, which was invented by Shu Cheng-tung, is patented and
manufactured by the Commercial Press and has been adopted by most of the
government offices and modern business offices in China.
Affiliated
Organizations: The company has affiliated with it The Oriental Library, The
China Publicity Company, and number of Correspondence Schools.
The
Oriental Library, which was organized primarily for the use of the Editorial
Staff of the Company, has grown to be one of the best-equipped reference
libraries in China and is open to the use of the public. The Library subscribes
to more than 700 different kinds of periodicals from all over the world and
contains one of the most valued collections of rare Chinese books in China,
besides more than 200,000 volumes in Chinese and 100,000 volumes in other
languages.
The
China Publicity Company handles the advertising of the company and acts as
agency for all the periodicals published by the company.
The
Correspondence Schools are maintained under the direction of the Editorial Division
and were established in answer to popular demand in China. They are of very
material assistance to those who are ambitious but have not had the time to
attend regular schools. There have been over 32,000 graduates from these
schools, and they are scattered in many professions in all parts of China.
Welfare
Work: Aside from the able management that has built up this great organization,
the humane view which the Company takes towards its employees no doubt has
contributed to its success. The workmen are the highest paid in China and are
protected by a group life insurance taken out by the company on behalf of all
employees. All workmen and employees receive an annual bonus in proportion to
the record and importance of their services. A pension for the old and retired
or for the families of the deceased is also provided for. A savings department
which pays interest on money deposited by its employees is run by the company. This
encourages many an employee to spare a part of his earnings for rainy days.
Schools for the children of employees are maintained and free scholarships are
provided. In the company’s Dispensary a foreign-trained doctor and corps of
nurses attend to the sick and injured employees. A Nursery is provided for
those women workers who have to feed their babies during working hours and a
maternity allowance is given to expectant mothers. A fire brigade with modern
equipment is in constant attendance and responds even to calls from the
neighborhood.
The
Commercial Press, Ltd., is the largest publisher and manufacturer in the Far
East. The name of the Company is well known to every school child and educated
person in China, as more than seventy per cent of the text-books and reference
and general reading books in use are published by the company. Its influence
permeates the whole country through the manifold services which it renders to
the cause of education in China.
The
closing paragraph is not an over-statement and should perhaps be the end of the
story. But I think mention should be made of one of the company’s present jobs
on hand, a job which is entitled to a more serious term than that.
Its
genesis goes back to the late Ch’ing dynasty when the Emperor Ch’ien Lung
compiled, or ordered compiled, the “Sze K’u Ch’uan Shu,” a complete collection
of all publications and MSS preserved up to the time of compilation and
classified in four main divisions: The Classics, History, Philosophy and
Literature. This gigantic bibliographic-encyclopaedia grew to 79,339 volumes
comprising 3,460 separate titles. Seven sets were printed. Two of them, housed
in Yangchow and Chinkiang were burned during the Taiping Revolution, 1853. The set
in the Wen Yuan Ko Library met the same fate when the allied Anglo-French
troops destroyed Yuen Ming Yuen, Peiping, seven years later. The set in the Wen
Su Ko library t Mukden has not been perused by (p. 1674) Chinese since the
Japanese occupied the city in September, 1931.
Three
sets remain and the Commercial Press is reprinting a "First Series"
of 231 of the rare and important titles in about 2000 volumes. The price for
the set is $360 (U. S.) or £75, Sterling. The last volumes will be ready in
July, and while at the plant we saw some of the books receiving their
tide-stamps — on the bottom edges!
The raison d'etre
for this giant enterprise is simply one of preservation of priceless
literature. This first series is one of pure selection of the best titles by a
committee of fifteen bibliographers called together by the Ministry of
Education.
An idea of the extent of
the company’s publishing business may be gained by a glance at catalog New
No. 2, June 1934, 122 pages of books compiled according to the Dewey System.
The classification headings: General Works, Philosophy, Religion, Social Sciences,
Useful Arts, Fine Arts, Literature, History and Geography. The foreword
stresses the point that particular attention is being given to books that rightly
interpret the East to the West.
The Press issues each month
a house organ. I have a copy at hand, but as it’s entirely in Chinese I can say
no more than that it’s nicely printed and has an attractive cover.
I think the Commercial Press
a most extraordinary institution. I think its accomplishment in rising from
very actual ashes to its present state one of the really heroic feats of our
time. I have never met a more sincere, energetic and courteous personnel. I am
most grateful to Messrs. Wang Kung, Chow and Huang for the help they have given
me in telling me the story of the Commercial Press. I hope they and their staff
have suffered no ill effects from the lecture they invited me to give them on
American publishing – at eight o’clock in the morning. (p. 1675)
[1]* On October 8th, a group of German cultural societies in Chinese
present 3000 volumes in German as a contribution toward the restocking of the
Library. Before the fire there were 100,000 volumes in German alone.
[2]* These are Mexican dollars (Shanghai currency) worth at that time
about $4,000,000 gold.
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