Chapter 32 Combining labor with mass production

The enemy's blockade, especially the "mopping up" in the autumn of 1943, brought great difficulties to the economic development and people's lives in the border areas, but it also encouraged the soldiers and civilians in the border areas to resolve to rely on themselves, develop production, and overcome difficulties.At that time, in order to overcome the difficulties faced, the prefectural and district party committees resolutely responded to Chairman Mao's call to "organize" and "do it yourself, and have enough food and clothing". They fought against the enemy with one hand and produced with the other. Defend production with victory in battle and increase confidence in production; increase production, improve life, improve the fighting spirit of the army and the people, and promote each other.While carrying out the struggle to siege and force back the enemy's fortresses, they did not miss the farming season to plunder the plowing, ploughing, planting, and harvesting. They not only won the struggle, but also obtained a bumper harvest, which ensured the military supplies and food for the people, and inspired the morale of the army and the people.

Through the rectification movement, our prefectural committees and sub-districts put special emphasis on changing the leadership style in light of the reality of the struggle, requiring leaders at all levels to go deep into the troops and the masses, organize the masses, implement face-to-face leadership, and do a good job in the implementation of various tasks.After the spring plowing mobilization, the prefectural committees and divisions organized several inspections. Before the autumn harvest, they jointly organized an inspection team to conduct a comprehensive inspection of combat readiness and production work in various places. With victory, many enemy fortresses were forced back, and the enemy dared not come again to "sweep" the situation of underestimating the enemy, paralyzing their thinking and relaxing their combat readiness, conducting general education, and implementing combat readiness measures for the struggle against "sweeping" and anti-grain grabbing; at the same time, checking and implementing the autumn harvest plan, Promoting the development of the revolutionary emulation movement has received very good results.

In November, the prefectural government also held a meeting on water conservancy construction, planning to open canals along the Naolun River to improve irrigation conditions, turn part of the dry land into irrigated land, and increase crop yields. spring plowing production.In the past, when the superiors assigned a task, there were often meetings within the party and outside the party. Mass organizations such as the Anti-Japanese League, the Youth Rescue Association, the Women's Rescue Association, and the Children's League held meetings at various levels to communicate. There were meetings almost every day, or even several meetings a day. Therefore, there is a saying among the masses that "the Kuomintang has more taxes and the Eight Routes will have more".In order to change this style of formalism, wasting leadership energy, and wasting the time of the masses, the prefectural committees and districts specially issued the "Instructions for Improving the Holding of Mass Meetings", requiring fewer meetings. Necessary meetings must be fully prepared before the meeting. In the speech, what to say must be agreed in advance, the speech should be short and clear, and avoid repetition; the speech should be detailed, specific, and vivid, so that everyone can hear clearly, and anyone who does not understand can still ask and discuss; less Talk empty words, talk more about the things that the masses care about, so that the masses can really gain something; it is also required that the meetings should try to absorb the heroes and models among the masses to speak more, reduce the speeches of government representatives, and at the same time, make full use of the time before the meeting to carry out small-scale publicity And cultural and entertainment activities, make the meeting lively and attract the masses to participate.After the implementation of this instruction in various places, the atmosphere of meetings has changed greatly, which has played a very good role in publicizing and mobilizing the masses.Doing a good job in communication and reporting is also an important means of mobilizing the masses and carrying out revolutionary competition activities.At the beginning of April, I personally presided over the meeting of the correspondents of the teams directly under the division. On April 11, I held a divisional mission and education work meeting to communicate and arrange the communication and reporting work.After these few meetings, the news reports of the sub-regions were quickly launched. Through the "Jinchaji Daily", "Zidi Bingbao" and the sub-regional "Production Front" tabloids, they reported in time the troops and militias, the achievements of the masses, and production. The situation, publicizing the deeds of typical units and heroes, has promoted various tasks.

Chairman Mao emphasized in his article "Get Organized": "As long as all of our brave and skilled Eighth Route Army and New Fourth Army can not only fight, do mass work, but also produce, we will not be afraid of any difficulties, and we will be like Master Mencius. Said: 'Invincible in the world.'" ("Selected Works of Mao Zedong", Volume III, p. 883) Our division has experienced a gradual process of understanding during the mass production movement.Before mid-April, because the mobilization work was not deep enough, some comrades still had insufficient understanding of the significance of large-scale production and lacked confidence in doing a good job in agricultural production in a war environment. Some comrades still had some resistance. For example, some said: "Why Tell the soldiers to produce too?" "War again, and produce again, and nothing will happen!" Some said: "What kind of production? The devils have come, and they will be wiped out!" "Today the wasteland will be relocated tomorrow. Who will get the harvest?" Due to lack of understanding, they are not active in labor. Some troops only look for good land when looking for arable land, and do not want bad land; As a result, many problems occurred in the transportation and marketing, and some of them even committed corruption and corruption.

After we discovered the above problems, in mid-April, we carried out extensive mobilization and education work from top to bottom, so that the majority of cadres and soldiers realized the great significance of "doing it yourself, getting enough food and clothing" and "developing production and ensuring supply", and established the "agriculture-oriented From mid-April to early June, two agricultural assault weeks were carried out successively. The first assault week used four-sevenths of the force and used more than 11,000 workers to help the masses produce. The second assault week focused on land reclamation by troops, and put forward the slogan of "struggle to break through ten thousand mu of arable land" in the whole district.At that time, we had only 3,162 mu of arable land, and it was a difficult task to break through the 10,000 mu barrier.The leaders of our district led the headquarters and the directly subordinate team to open up the mountain on April 24th. The commander Zheng Weishan, the chief of staff Yi Yaocai, and myself organized a production team, which lasted from breakfast to dinner every day. They went down the mountain after dinner, and for five days in a row, everyone had blood blisters on their hands; Yi Yaocai had the most blood blisters, with eight blisters on both hands.In the first three days of land reclamation, our leading comrades reclaimed seven and a half acres of land. Zheng Weishan and I also planted 75 pumpkins, 90 hemp trees, and 50 bean plants, all of which were fertilized.The leading organization took the lead, and all the troops acted immediately, and soon broke through the 10,000-mu mark. The arable land of the troops in the whole division increased from 3,162 mu to 13,717 mu. The wasteland was 9,946 mu, more than 3,000 mu more than the original plan; together with the income from transportation, distribution, sideline business, and handicraft industry, the goal of self-sufficiency in grain and vegetables for two months and improvement of food throughout the year was completed fairly well. Supplementary funding and other tasks.The army developed production, and life generally improved. The general food unit has sufficient oil and salt, and fresh vegetables are often available.

Production and management are distributed according to the amount of labor, so that more than 90% of the soldiers have savings. Generally, they have daily necessities such as towels, soap, toothbrushes, and tooth powder. 1. For shareholders of consumer cooperatives, the individual dividends are more than 500 yuan a year, and the minimum is about 10 yuan.With the improvement of living conditions, the number of patients in the army has decreased, and the number of patients has dropped to only 2.3% of the total number of people, a decrease of 1.2% from the previous year.The army carried out a large-scale production campaign, and officers and soldiers worked side by side, sharing joys and sorrows, and further strengthened the relationship between officers and soldiers; the army was self-sufficient in part of its production, reducing the burden on the masses, and also helping the masses in production, further strengthening the military-government and military-civilian relations.

In the fall of 1943, the enemy's "big mopping-up", burning, killing, and looting caused serious damage to our sub-district. People's food and crops were robbed, farm animals and farm tools were robbed, houses were burned, and young and middle-aged laborers were killed and killed. Captives have caused great difficulties in the production and life of the masses.In the spring of 1944, our prefectural committees and special agencies first carried out disaster relief, relieving the victims, distributing food loans to help the masses survive the spring famine, and issuing loans to purchase livestock before spring plowing, replenishing livestock, and carrying out transportation.After the people’s lives were basically settled down, they followed Chairman Mao’s instructions to “organize” and vigorously developed the labor organization of labor transfer teams and labor transfer teams. In rural areas where conditions allowed, they also tried to establish consumer and production cooperatives to carry out large-scale production campaigns.

At the beginning of spring plowing, the masses were worried that the enemy would come again to "sweep" and plunder, fearing that they would "work hard for a year, and the devils would rob them all when they came", and their enthusiasm for production was not high.With the deepening of propaganda and mobilization work, especially the successive victories in the struggle to besiege and force back the enemy's fortresses, the enthusiasm for production gradually increased.In order to increase production, Pingshan County mobilized the masses to press a large amount of green manure. According to incomplete statistics from the six districts, nearly 9.6 million catties of grass were mowed in just over a month, and the amount of grass in Zhaojiazhuang alone reached 480,000 catties. , Guaranteeing 180 tans of fertilizer per mu for paddy fields and 60 to 100 tans for dry land.Not long after the wheat was planted in the county, it was hit by locusts which had not been encountered in more than 30 years.The county party committee and the county government immediately mobilized the masses to exterminate the locusts. After seven or eight days of assault, more than 25,000 manpower were mobilized to capture 15,400 catties of migratory locusts, and the locust plague was quickly extinguished without causing serious losses or spreading to neighboring areas. counties.There is a village in Nanliang, Jingxing County, located outside the enemy's blockade wall, but most of the cultivated land is inside the blockade wall. The enemy blocked the blockade wall with machine guns, leaving only one door for the masses to enter and exit. The sentry checks were very strict.In the past, it was troublesome and dangerous for the masses to enter and exit the blockade because of farming, and many lands were abandoned.After launching the mass production campaign, Yang Shanda, the director of the Youth Rescue Society of the village, led five young people to organize a labor allocation group first, to find ways to overcome difficulties and create experience first.Yang Shantai set up a work team of six people and six animals. When the enemy did not open the door when the slope was built, they would block the outside of the wall and only go inside the wall when the door was opened. Sometimes the enemy would not open the door for several days, and the farming season could not be delayed. The shifting team took farm tools and dry food to climb over the blockade wall to create a slope before dawn, and climbed the wall to return to the village after dusk, driving the whole village to climb over the blockade wall to create a slope.When the wheat was being harvested, the enemy deliberately did not open the door. Yang Shantai sent the work team to use the moonlight night to harvest over the wall, and harvested seven acres of wheat in one night. The next day, the whole village followed suit. stand up.

There is still part of the cultivated land in this village under the enemy's fortress. The enemy does not allow crops to be planted, so Yang Shan sent a work team to secretly plant them on moonlit nights. One person stood guard and five people plowed; He came up with a wonderful method. During the day, all six of them wore straw camouflage clothes and squatted down to farm, so that the enemy could not see them.In June, the militia cooperated with our sub-divisional soldiers to besiege the enemy on the fort. Yang Shantai’s work group sent three young militiamen to join the guerrilla team to besiege the enemy, and the remaining three joined the village cadres to form a mixed work group of eleven people. , insist on hoeing.Later, it was discovered that the enemy did not dare to shoot, so they hoeed more and more forward, mobilized the whole village, and hoeed all the land in front of the fort.At this time, the enemies on the fort were besieged by us and did not dare to move around, but Jiazhuang's special service team still often came to deliver water and food to the enemies on the fort, and took the opportunity to arrest people and rob things. Formed an explosion team, buried landmines on the three-way intersection at the head of the village, and killed six or seven Japanese devils in a row, until the devils dared not come up the road.Beginning in spring, Yang Shanda's labor team created slopes, delivered manure, sowed seeds, hoeed seedlings, pulled weeds, and harvested wheat without interruption. The six of them planted fifty-nine acres of flat land, twenty-nine acres On the half-sloping land, 12 mu of wasteland was opened up, with an average of more than 20 packs of manure per mu.In the past few years, only two or three buckets of grain were harvested per mu of land. In 1944, the average yield per mu reached six buckets and five liters.In addition, they also took advantage of the slack season to run transportation, earning 1,800 yuan successively.From the production situation of Yang Shantai's work team, we can see the labor enthusiasm of the masses and the brave fighting spirit of doing everything possible to plant good land.

In order to sum up and promote the experience of the mass production movement, the leading comrades of the prefectural committee and the special agency and I caught the labor hero Yin Jizi of Jinggou Village in Jingxing County and the example of the village's mutual aid, and achieved certain results.Jinggou is an administrative village sixteen miles north of Jingxing City. The whole village includes four natural villages and twelve Zhuangzi. They live scattered in a ravine five miles wide and fifteen miles long. There are 136 households, six There are 120 people; the village has 1,663 mu of arable land, including 1,351 mu of dry land and 312 mu of sloping land, with an average of 2 mu and 70 mu of land per person.Due to the overpopulation and lack of land, the poor land, and the devastation by the Japanese and puppet troops, more than 60% of the households were short of food all the year round; in 1943, the enemy suffered another catastrophe during the "big mopping up" and the whole village was burned down. There were 303 houses, more than 1,100 pieces of farm tools were lost, food and vegetables were looted and ruined by the enemy, and people's lives were very difficult.

In the spring of 1944, Yin Jizi, the director of the Anti-Japanese League in the village, led the masses to help each other through the spring famine.He saw that the four households had run out of food, and even though he could not eat enough, he still took the lead in donating three liters of corn to the four extremely poor households.Driven by him, the whole village donated two stones of millet, one stone and five buckets of chaff, one thousand catties of carrots, ten catties of dried carrots and 30 yuan to help these four extremely poor households.At the same time, he organized carpenters and blacksmiths into the working group, repaired and built more than 40 houses, so that each family had a place to live, and produced 299 pieces of farm tools, so that all laborers had shovels, shovels, and sickles. Waiting for farm tools to be used.Then, Yin Jizi organized the labor force of the whole village and divided it into four labor groups and 36 labor groups, with 264 people (accounting for 67% of the village labor force and 100% of the total population). 42/42), the whole village implements large-scale labor allocation for men, women and children according to different seasons, manpower and animal power participate in the labor allocation together, mobilizing the labor enthusiasm of the whole village.The whole village has a total of 2,060 mu of cultivated land, more than 300 mu of land opened up and expanded than in 1943, and 1,209 shi of grain harvested, 282 shi of grain more than in the previous year , Many farmers have doubled the amount of grain compared with the previous year.Due to the development of production, people's lives have been greatly improved. In previous years, more than 70 households in the village were starving and had to rely on government relief. After the large-scale production movement, most of them had food and clothing. In the spring famine of the second year, there was not enough food, so Yinjizi organized these three families to participate in winter production, weaving baskets to earn money, and the difficulties were solved.The large-scale production of the allocation of workers and mutual aid has brought good times to the whole village. After the autumn harvest, on October 22, the whole village further organized a comprehensive large-scale cooperative. A total of more than 500 people were organized in the group, with 129 sheep, 24 spinning wheels, a loom, a carpenter group, a blacksmith stove, and a boiler stove, with funds of 191,800 More than a hundred yuan.This kind of comprehensive cooperative is like the embryonic form of the primary cooperative in the early days of the founding of our country.Organized in this way, the allocation of workers and mutual assistance will be regularized throughout the year.Yinjizi made great achievements in his work. He was elected as a county labor hero and model worker, and was elected to attend the Second Heroes Conference of the border area held in December. In carrying out the large-scale production movement centered on agriculture, we also attach importance to the development of rural sidelines and transportation, distribution and sales, so as to increase farmers' income and improve the lives of the masses.The Jingxing County government allocated more than 500,000 yuan in interest-free sideline loans to the masses as funds for the development of pig feeding, sheep raising, spinning and weaving, vitex basket weaving, and transportation.Due to the enemy's destruction of the original production base of textile homecloth in Pingshan County, transportation was blocked, raw materials were scarce, sales were difficult, and the textile industry gradually shrank.After the large-scale production movement, the county supply and marketing cooperatives issued loans to restore the textile industry, and soon more than 18,000 spinning wheels and more than 3,000 looms were in operation, and 10,000 squares of unearthed cloth were woven in one winter slack season.With the recovery of the textile industry, the transportation industry has also developed greatly.In February 1943, Baishizhuang in Pingshan County was devastated by the enemy's "mopping up". There were only five animals left in the village. Animal power for arable land was already very difficult, let alone transportation.At the beginning of the large-scale production movement, the government loan allowed them to buy nine animals, and the village cadre Li Zhengan took the lead in organizing a transport team. In just nine months, the number of animals in the village increased to fifty-six, with a net transportation fee of thirty-five. ten thousand yuan.At the same time, the transportation team organized workers to grow 282 mu of wheat more than in the past, and due to the increase in livestock, the fertilizer was sufficient, and the team worked intensively, and the whole village had a bumper harvest in autumn, which was 100% more grain than in 1943. The hundred and ten stones not only compensated the losses caused by the enemy's sabotage, but also greatly improved the lives of the masses. Fuel in the southeast plains of the fourth district has always been supplied by Jingxing coal. After the outbreak of the Anti-Japanese War, because the Japanese and puppet troops seized the Jingxing coal mines, they could not import a large amount of coal. There is no firewood, sorghum and corn green leaves growing in the fields are collected and burned. As a result, most of the straw in the plains cannot be used for manure retting.Fuel for troops, institutions, and schools has also become a big problem.On the contrary, Pingding County in this area is rich in coal production, and the local people make a living by mining coal and transporting coal in small coal kilns. However, under the blockade of the enemy in the past few years, transportation has been difficult, coal sales have been sluggish, and a large number of workers have lost their jobs.Based on this situation, our prefectural committee and special agency decided to set up a coal transfer company to transport and sell coal, thus solving the problems of fuel in the plain area and the livelihood of unemployed workers.After more than half a year of transportation and sales, it has also promoted the development of the transportation industry in the villages along the 300-mile length of the line, increasing the income of the masses, and the amount of pressed green manure in the plain area has greatly increased, and the grain production has also increased. This move can be said to benefit the masses and everyone is happy. The militia and the guerrillas based on the militia are a mass armed organization that does not separate from production, and is a powerful assistant to the subordinate soldiers.They have a large number of people and are widely distributed. They are engaged in production in peacetime, and cooperate with troops to fight in wartime, combining labor with military force.However, during the anti-"mopping up" struggle in 1943, due to lack of experience, the militia had little food reserves. Some militiamen and guerrillas often starved due to lack of combat rations.Accepting this lesson, our prefectural committees and divisions conscientiously implemented the instructions of the military region on solving the wartime food problem of the militia through large-scale production, and mobilized the militia to solve the war food problem through self-reliance.The Longhua militiamen in Yixian County proposed: "With a sickle in one hand and a pistol in one hand, the field should be used as a battlefield, and what one grows can be eaten by one's own, so as not to let the devils show their ferocity!" Fuping civilian soldiers put forward: "A farm tool in one hand and a pistol in one hand, a combat hero should become a labor hero, and a guerrilla squad should become a worker team"; In the competition with production, militias and guerrilla teams in various places still find time to do collective labor and produce their own war rations even when combat operations are relatively frequent.There are many ways for them to produce, some open up wasteland and repair beaches, some rent land from the masses, contract labor, and some collect firewood and transport.Counties such as Fuping and Pingshan achieved relatively good results. Judging from the reported statistics, Fuping civilian soldiers reclaimed 2,026 mu of land, repaired 107 mu of beach land, planted 64 mu of dry land, and harvested 1,070 mu of grain. Twelve stones, 15,000 catties of yams, and more than 65,100 catties of firewood, earning more than 26,600 yuan, and more than 13,400 yuan for transportation and labor contracting.The Pingshan militia opened up 2,247 mu of land, harvested more than 12,700 catties of grain, and earned more than 87,400 yuan for transportation and labor contracting, which basically solved the problem of war grain. "Jinchaji Daily" published a news about this, and issued a "short commentary", affirming that "Fuping and Pingshan have done the best" to solve the militia war rations, and emphasized that: "The militia war ration issue is one of the problems in the militia construction. If major problems are properly resolved, not only will the militia’s combat effectiveness be directly consolidated, but the burden on the people will be lightened, the people will support the militia even more, and the victory guarantee of the mass armed forces will be stronger.”