In the past, the peasantry, the farmers, were considered the backbone of China, but in this new industrial era, that would change. In Shanghai's cotton mills, "machines operated twenty-four hours a day, twelve months a year." (Honig 3). The working class would support the upper class and the general public by creating manufactured goods and textiles to be sold in markets. As a result, those who made up the working class in China were able to mass produce products that would help revive the economy of China's urban areas. However, not all workers come from urban areas. Often, laborers from rural areas came to cities in search of labor as the need for agrarian labor declined. Additionally, because rural families were poor, they sent their children to the city to ease the financial burden at home and send money home to support their families remaining outside the cities. Most machine laborers came from China's lower classes and sought positions that did not require skilled labor, although this was not always the case. Typically, unskilled labor positions were assigned to children, especially in the 1920s, until this proved unprofitable and unnecessary (Hershatter 53). In Shanghai's cotton mills, the ages of workers varied greatly. There were many young children as young as seven years old, young women (who brought their newborns to the factories), working alongside men and women many years their senior (Honig 54). The workers were divided not only by age, but also by gender. and geographical location. In Shanghai, most workers hired in cotton mills were women, while in Tianjin, men were the majority in the factories until World War II. About...... middle of paper......, Ch'u and Winberg Chai. Chinese society in evolution. New York: New American Library, 1962. PrintChen, Janet Y.. Guilty of Destitution: China's Urban Poor, 1900-1953. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2012. Print Hershatter, Gail. The workers of Tianjin, 1900-1949. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1986. Print. Honig, Emily. Sisters and strangers: women in the Shanghai cotton mills, 1919-1949. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1986. PrintSmith, Bradley F.. The Long Shadow of War: World War II and its Aftermath: China, Russia, Britain, America. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1986. PrintTsin, Michael Tsang. Nation, governance and modernity in China: Canton, 1900-1927. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999. PrintYeh, Wen-Hsin. Becoming Chinese: passages to modernity and beyond. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2000. Print