AS DIFFICULTIES in Shanghai increased, unrest amongst the working classes also increased. This may have been in part due to increased costs without proper increase in wages; but it was by no means only due to this cause. There was a tenseness in the very atmosphere which everybody felt; all knew disaster was ahead, and it made men unreasonable and restless.
I suppose there were few, if any, workmen better treated than were our men, including our printers; but through those months they became more and more difficult to handle, and more and more unreasonable. Our printing costs went up till it became apparent that it was impossible for us to carry on compared to the very much lower expenses of the Chinese printing concerns about us. A number of our printers were not Christians, and these men kept stirring up the rest to make trouble. As this spirit increased, we decided the best thing to do was to sell our plant while we still had the opportunity to do so.
It was in March, 1941, that we sold out to a very old friend of ours who had for years been doing much of our printing. Our friend was an earnest Christian man, and we knew of no one to whom we would rather turn over our plant than to him. The plant also suited him well. His presses were large, and he was not in a position to handle the type of work for which ours were designed; so it was to his advantage to take it.
The price we got was not high, but the bargain included an undertaking to look after any of the men who wished to remain, so that we were clear of this responsibility. The greater part of the price was to be taken out in printing; so we at once arranged to stock up heavily in posters and tracts, both of which have been very important lines in our business. This gave us unusually heavy stocks in these essential Gospel witnesses, and with our new warehouse, we were in a position to store them. We did not know then that this was the Lord's merciful provision for us, and that those heavy stocks were there to carry us through five years, when we would not be able to renew them. A Chinese Christian wrote us recently referring to this, and pointed out how like it was to God's provision in Egypt for the years of famine ahead.
But God's hand was graciously in this sale in another way. Just about nine months after we sold, war broke out; and one of the first proclamations of the Japanese was that all sales by British and Americans made within six months before the war were null and void, and the properties sold were taken over by the Japs. They did actually try to put in a claim for our printing plant, but the purchaser was able to prove he had held it for nine months, so the matter was dropped.
“How good is the God we adore,
Our faithful unchangeable Friend;
His love is as great as His power,
And knows neither measure nor end.”