The National Government's Control Over The Grass-root Society

The concept "Social Control" was put forward for the first time in Social Control, a collection of thesis which an American sociologist E.A. Rose published in 1901. He gave a further explanation of this concept in The Principles of Sociology published in 1920. According to Rose's view, social control means the social restraint on the behavior of individuals or a group. It's a kind of controlling mechanism of keeping the civil order. After introduced to China, this concept was given many kinds of concrete explanations by domestic scholars. The author thinks, social control not only is a kind of mechanism, but includes the complicated course itself at the same time. But, in any case, the main contribution of putting forward this concept is that it has provided us a kind of theory frame of carrying on social history research neutrally and objectively.With the new theories of sociology, political science, economics and so on spread into our country, researches referring these theories on social history, especially grass-root social history are paid more attention than before. However, there are very few treatises referring the social control theory and carrying on researches on dockworkers.The thesis has five parts altogether. In the introduction, the author reviews the achievements and defects of existing researches on workers and the governance of Kuomintang and its government. In Chapter One, the writer narrates the National Government's management and control of workers before the War of Resistance against Japan in two aspects. One is formulating, revising and enlarging various kinds of laws and regulations of trade union to establish and improve the trade unions at all levels. The other is controlling over workers' public opinion. Chapter Two treats from the organization aspect the Hankow Government's management and control of the dockworkers after the War of Resistance against Japan. After expounding the inner organizations of the Hankow Quay Trade Union and the Hankow Quay Business Management Station established by Hankow Municipal Government to manage and control the dockworkers, the author probes into the complicated relation and various kinds of disputes between the union and the station during this period. In Chapter Three, the writer relates Hankow Municipal Government's system management and control of the dockworkers concerning the management measures made by the municipal government to control the dockworkers and manage the quay business. Chapter Four explores Hankow Municipal Government's culture control over the dockworkers by restoring the news inspection system, supplying "par paper" and publishing Workers' Newspaper after the war. It is obvious that the management and control style that Hankow Municipal Government does not empower the quay union but organizes another management organ to strengthen the control over the dockworkers and their groups cuts apart and weakens the management and control ability of the municipal government, and offsets some effects that the municipal government has achieved during the system and culture control over the dockworkers. Meanwhile, this control style obviously exposes the National Government's true intention to the workers' groups. That is to give them some legal semblance not real power. The group politics policy that Hankow Municipal Government strives to adjust and control the dockworkers through the quay union only shows apparently the local government's strong tough but doesn't make the dockworkers obey the government and the union willingly. So it doesn't work effectively.