1920s Shanghai was the most important trade and industrial center in Asia.

Half of all workers were employed in the cotton industry. But the silk industry was also important and many other goods were produced as well.

The cotton mills were the largest. At a cotton mill, as many as 2000 employees were gathered in a single building. In the early 20s women did the spinning and weaving, while men were in charge of carrying, sorting and other physically demanding labor as well as technical tasks. As the 20s wore on, physical labor increasingly shifted towards the women, while elite jobs such as technicians, engineers, foremen and similar remained the province of men.

Roughly 9% of the workers in cotton mills were children, a classification that lasted until the age of 13 at the time. Children performed tasks such as sweeping and bringing empty spools for the spinners.

Cotton mills were usually owned by Chinese or Japanese businessmen.

Silkworks were notably smaller, usually having no more than 100 employees. On the other hand, they were far more numerous and dotted most of the city. The silk coccoons came from the local region and the Yangtze valley, but never from too far up the river. This was due to silk coccoons needing to be boiled within a few days of harvest. Silk along with tea was the most significant local crop. Silkefabrikkerne var betydeligt mindre, måske var der 100 ansatte på en fabrik.

Large numbers of child laborers, almost all girls, were employed by the silk works. Conditions for the child laborers were harsh, with work involving dipping the coccoons in scalding water at 80 degrees celsius and retrieve them using their bare hands. This meant they had perpetually burned fingers.

The silk works were usually owned by the British, while tobacco factories were mostly owned by British American Tobacco, a primarily British company despite the name.

Workers lived close enough to the factories that they were within walking districts, some of the girls working in the silk works even lived at the factory.

The working day lasted 10-12 hours, either in a day or night shift so that the machines were never idle. It gradually became the norm to have a single day off every two weeks. After the day off, workers usually switched between the day and night shifts, so that they worked during the day and the night for two weeks each in any given month.

Each twelve hour workday included a half hour lunch break. During this workers could use a warm water faucet to heat the rice they brought to work, often eating it with a few vegetables.

Pay was based on both position and gender. Labor was divided into unskilled, partially skilled, trainees and skilled laborers.

The highest paid workers earned more than twice that of the most poorly paid. Foremen, engineers and other management positions earned even more. The lowest wages were paid to the children. A woman earned 25% less for the same work as a man.

The foremen and most of the engineers were Chinese, leaving precious few white and Japanese people at the factories on a daily basis.

A white or Japanese management was usually seen as preferable to a Chinese as they tended to be more professional.

Workers were kept under close scrutiny during work. Toilet visits, for example, were closely watched. To go to the toilet a worker had to request permission from their foreman, explaining their need. The foreman would then judge the time they needed before handing them a token to show to the toilet watchment. Even so, toilet visits were often used as a way to take a break. In general, workers tried to sneak in as many breaks as possible, including for naps. Many women also had to bring their children to work, needing the occasional break to look after them. This behavior demanded that the workers covered for each other and that the foreman (or woman) could be bribed to look the other way.

Adult workers at a small silkworks