As this was a new idea to her, Helen was not able to find the language to explain it. She said: “I remember trying to call them ‘workers’ producers society’ or ‘workers’ cooperatives’. My husband did not see any point in the wild idea for a long time. He objected when I tried to convert visitors and Chinese.” Therefore Helen Snow insistently discussed her unformed thoughts with any and every caller to the Snow’s apartment in order to get the idea launched.
Her first convert She considered was the Snows’ good friend and former Chairman of Yanjing University’s Department of Journalism, Hubert S. Liang, who soon after the outbreak of the war with Japan, had given up his post at Yanjing to go to Shanghai, where he had helped organize educational, civic and cultural groups to resist Japan, and to write articles to publicize China’s danger from Japanese aggression. This work put Liang in touch with the liberal and anti-Japanese elements of Shanghai society. His contacts and connections came to be of crucial importance or launching the Indusco idea in Shanghai, in its early organizational phases. But before Liang would openly admit to supporting Helen’s idea, he seemed to want the assurance that her own husband saw some merits in it.
Ed initially was simply not interested in his wife’s new idea. Like Helen earlier, and like the others, Ed felt that cooperatives in China were pro-Kuomintang and reformist, and were therefore not a meaningful solution to China’s pressing economic, political and military problems.
As Helen recalls, what first opened up Ed’s mind to consideration of the idea was his discovery in notes from northern Shaanxi that something called “producers” cooperatives” had existed in the communist Jiangxi before the Long March. And therefore it would work. “From then on his ridicule stopped.” Ed Snow began to see the possibility of combining this idea with his own primary interests in the evacuation of industry and fighting in the war. He did not have to be convinced that productive machinery could be transported enormous distance by primitive means, and then production resumed in new areas under the guidance of skilled technicians, because he knew the Communists had achieved amazing feats along these lines during the Long March.
Ed Snow’s imagination stirred, and he came up with the right term one day- ‘industrial cooperatives’ (Rewi Alley latter had a cable address ‘Indusco’ and they nicknamed the movement this, also C.I.C. and ‘Gung Ho’). With this new involvement, Edgar Snow’s crucial support became enthusiastic.
Helen said: “Ed’s support was crucial because except for Ed, hardly anyone would have supported me. Had he objected, they would not have listened to me. His big role was to support me and my ideas.”
Madam Sun Yat-sen did not hesitate a minute to support the Indusco project as soon as she was informed of it. She was then in Hong Kong trying to organize relief for the interior, including orphanages and medical aid for the Communist regions.
Meantime, Hubert Liang had brought Xu Xing-liu, the dean of Shanghai bankers, to the Snow’s apartment to hear the Indusco story. Xu saw the value of any kind of industry. He was much more optimistic about the idea. This was the most encouraging thing that had happened, but Xu had not much hope that the national government would take the coop idea. Soon afterward, he was killed in a plane crash during a trip to the interior. He was at that time carrying the plan to see what he could do with it.