Chapter 16 Cotton King

In November 1916, Zhonghua Book Company in Shanghai published a booklet titled "Management Laws Applicable to Factories". In the 10 years after publication, only 800 copies of this book were sold.Still, it has made translators well-known figures in Chinese business circles.This book is the founding work of global management. American Frederick W. Taylor published "Principles of Scientific Management" in 1911. The scientific management concept put forward by Taylor in this book makes management To be a human science founded on definite statutes, provisions, and principles.The translator Mu Ouchu (1876-1943) was a nearly forty-year-old student studying in the United States. He visited Taylor several times for this purpose, and he was the only Chinese who had a discussion with this great management scientist.What's more interesting is that the Chinese version of Mu Ouchu was published earlier than the European version.

Mu Ouchu was born in a cotton merchant's family in Pudong, Shanghai. He entered the cotton trade as an apprentice at the age of 19. Throughout his life, he was entangled with cotton.He studied at Nanyang Public School, worked in Hart Customs, and was invited by Zhang Jian to be the police chief of Jiangsu Railway. He studied in Texas, the most industrially developed state in the United States. This study lasted for eight years. Huang Wanli, the son of his Nanyang Public School classmate Huang Yanpei and a famous water conservancy scientist, later commemorated, "Uncle Mu started from how to grow cotton and how to grow it well." Cotton, how cotton is spun into yarn, woven into cloth, how to run a factory, and how to effectively manage the factory, he studied systematically with a purpose, a complete set, and a plan. Such a planned, interdisciplinary, multidisciplinary, and complete set of learning of international students, there was no one before him.”

After Mu Ou finished his studies and returned to China, he immediately raised 200,000 taels of silver with his elder brother to establish the Shanghai Deda Cotton Mill. One year later, the cotton yarn produced by Deda won the first place in the Beijing Commodity Display Quality Competition, and he became famous overnight.The cotton textile industry was the largest industry in China at that time, and gathered many top entrepreneurs such as Zhang Jian, the Rong brothers, and Zhou Xuexi. Mu Ou came from behind, and he was able to rise rapidly. With the cotton professional knowledge and scientific management he learned in the United States Methods are inseparable.After the success of Deda University, he quickly raised 1.2 million taels of funds to build a thick raw yarn factory. A few years later, he raised another 2 million taels to establish Zhengzhou Yufeng Yarn Factory. enterprise.Five years after Mu Ou returned to China, he opened three factories and became one of the "Four Heavenly Kings" in the cotton yarn industry along with Zhang, Rong and Zhou.

Different from the other three "Heavenly Kings"—interestingly, they are representatives of scholars, businessmen, and government officials. protrude.While running the factory, he successively wrote long articles such as "Report on Experimental Transplantation of American Cotton Spinning Capability" and "Spinning Mill Organization Law", which greatly promoted the progress of the national textile industry.He initiated the "China Cotton Planting Improvement Society", bought more than 1,500 mu of land in Jiangsu, Henan, Hebei, Hubei and other places, opened up cotton testing grounds, and vigorously promoted the cultivation of American cotton.At his initiative, the Shanghai Huashang Yarn Mills Association set up a cotton planting committee, bought American cotton seeds and sent them to the provinces for trial planting, provided technical consultation on cotton planting, printed brochures on improving cotton planting, and explained the improvements to cotton farmers in the most easy-to-understand words. Cotton planting methods, including "A Brief Introduction to the Improvement of Cotton Planting" written by himself, in August 1917, tens of thousands of copies were printed, and it was also advertised in "Shenbao", and anyone can ask for it.His Housheng Cotton Mill also has a cotton testing center, which conducts performance tests on cotton sent from all over the country for free.Mu Ou never refuses newcomers, and never hesitates to give advice.

At that time, the management of Chinese spinning mills was still very primitive, generally divided into the literary field and the military field. The literary field was the account room, and the military field was the foreman.Mu Ouchu took the lead in abolishing the foreman system and changing it to the general manager responsibility system.In addition, the establishment of a new financial system, changing the traditional journal to the double-entry accounting method, this is the first introduction of a Western financial system in China.He also personally drafted the format and content of many reports, so that the factory's consumables, working hours, output, etc. can be fed back in a timely manner, which is clear at a glance.In addition, he also formulated a set of factory rules and regulations such as the "Workers' Regulations", "Inter-factory Regulations", and "Punishment Regulations". There are 81 total punishment regulations.There are also human factors in these rules. For example, if workers make mistakes occasionally, they should not yell loudly to make them lose face in front of everyone.On the basis of specific practical management, he made a Chinese-style improvement to Taylor's scientific management method, and summed up the four principles of scientific management: no waste of talent, no waste of material, no waste of time, and no waste of power.It also summarizes 8 criteria for being a manager - being able to find things to do by oneself, being able to solve problems, having a large scale, being ambitious, knowing how to cherish machines, saving money appropriately, being good at grasping opportunities, etc. Later, these 8 criteria The standard is further simplified to "five uses": know how to use people, know how to use things, know how to use time, know how to use money, and know how to take advantage of opportunities.

These innovations are of revolutionary significance to the progress of Chinese enterprise management.The three factories of M Moser became the cotton textile enterprises with the most advanced technology and equipment and the most advanced management in China at that time. Mu Ouchu also had a sensational debate with the ideological circles at that time. In 1920, the Housheng Spinning Factory went to Changsha to recruit female workers. The local "Hunan Daily" continuously published articles severely criticizing Housheng's recruitment behavior. Yuan.Mu Ouchu published an article to refute, thinking that "I firmly believe that in order to save China's poverty and weakness, there is no other way than revitalizing various major industries." He also mocked, "Dare to advise a generation of scholars. Be elusive, study from the facts, and win with deeds rather than with words.” His rebuttal drew strong criticism from Zhu Zhixin, who served as Sun Yat-sen’s secretary and was also the first theorist to introduce Marx to China. In "Is Industry Advocating This Way?" "In the article, it is believed that Mu's theory is absurd, and industrialists cannot make a lot of money on the grounds of saving the country. Only by eradicating unfair distribution can social progress be achieved.This great debate involved the well-known Chen Duxiu. He published a lengthy survey on "The Problem of Female Workers in Hunan in Shanghai Housheng Spinning Mill" in "New Youth". Progress from individual industrialism to social industrialism." This debate had a great influence on the ideological circles at the time, and it was also the first empirical appearance of Marx's theory in the Chinese business circles.Zhong Xiangcai, a scholar at the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences, commented, “This divergence is actually a divergence between the business ethics of entrepreneurs and the social ethics of revolutionaries. The idea of ​​saving the country by industry and the reformist ideas of the late Qing Dynasty are actually in the same line. In actual effect Actually, they may not be as straightforward and brisk as the social revolution, but their role in the evolution of the system is very real, microscopic and pragmatic.”

The surprising fact is that although Mu Ouchu had such advanced professional technology and scientific management level, he still tasted the bitter fruit in the Great Depression in 1924. In the industrial crisis induced by the soaring cotton price, His three factories fell into trouble one after another. Deda was acquired by Rong Zongjing, Housheng was liquidated due to shareholder disputes, and Zhengzhou Yufeng was affected because it was located in the main battlefield of warlord melee. Later, it was forced to mortgage it to Shenchang foreign company in the United States. .M Moser's defeat seems to indicate that there is indeed a unique business environment in China.

In 1928, Mu Ouchu was recommended by Kong Xiangxi, his American university classmate and Chiang Kai-shek's "big steward of the money bag", as the deputy director of the Ministry of Industry and Commerce of the Nationalist Government. ", "Labor Dispute Settlement Law" and so on.This industrialist, who has the essence of American business ethics, believes that "in today's increasingly complex personnel and society, no matter what kind of organization, it must be based on the rule of law, and then there must be a certain track to follow and certain rules to follow. Follow."

After the outbreak of the Anti-Japanese War, Mu Ouchu served as the chairman of the Agricultural Products Promotion Committee. In order to improve the shortage of cotton cloth in the rear, he invented the "Qiqi Cotton Spinning Machine", which is a pedal-type wooden textile machine. There are 32 spindles, working 10 hours a day, and can spin 1.5 catties of cotton yarn.Because each machine only needs one person to operate, the production efficiency is several times higher than that of the old handloom, so it is very popular in the Kuomintang-controlled areas and the Northwest base areas of the Communist Party. "The national humiliation.This kind of "technical innovation" is far from what Mu Ouchu had learned in American universities, but it is also the last professional contribution of the person who knows cotton best in China.

In 1943, Mu Ouchu died of intestinal cancer. On the simple foundation hall, the most eye-catching elegiac couplet is four words - "behind the clothes and quilts". Few people in the business world in later generations know about Mu Ouchu.His name appears occasionally, but he is in the opera circle where even eight poles can't be beaten.Mu Ouchu is suave and suave, with a good-looking talent. He likes Kunqu opera, calligraphy, studying Buddhism, raising fish and fighting birds all his life. He is a rare talented entrepreneur. In 1921, feeling the decline of the ancient Kunqu Opera, he sponsored the establishment of the Kunqu Opera Preservation Society and the Kunqu Opera Institution. At the end of the Qing Dynasty, the rise of skin yellow and the decline of Kunqu opera, Mr. Jing tried his best to advocate, and then he got a continuation of the line, as of today."

Therefore, Mu Ochu, the "King of Cotton", was completely forgotten in his career, but he was often remembered by dramatists thousands of miles away. All books."