Evening Republican, Volume 19, Number 6, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 7 January 1915 — Japan's Hard Working Women [ARTICLE+ILLUSTRATION]

Japan's Ha rd Working Women

GLADLY though I would linger on the more beautiful and romantic aspects of Japan, the Japan of the Iris and cherry blossom, of violet lake and pine-clad mountains, of maple trees running In autumn like tongues of flames along the hillside, of little fishing villages crowding the romantic shores of the Inland sea, of Fuji, enowpowdered and aloof, hanging as It were in midair 'twixt earth and sky—it Is of another and less lovely Japan I must speak today. Modern industry has laid its hand already on this race, writes Violet Markham,.in the Westminster Gazette, and the pressure is not likely to grow less heavy as time goes on.

The hand-to-hand struggle with a somewhat reluctant nature In wringing from her the means of subsistence for a population of 53,000,000 people is a severe one. Japan is a mountainous country, and though certain great tracts oflrich alluvial plain exist, such districjtsare the exception. Every Inch of possible land is cultivated, and the series of terraces carried up the killsides tell their own tale, showing, as in China, how no available pocket of soil has been overlooked. Rice is the staple food of the people, and from end to end of Japan the rice fields are the salient, feature of the landscape. But behind the rice fields of Japan stands the shadow of the needs of the

Japanese people. There seems nothing grown but rice, and yet, even so, any failure of the crop means famine and starvation fpr whole districts. Japan, in a word, is hard put to it to make both ends meet, and the position to which she has arrived among the great nations of the world strains the slender resources of her people almost to the breaking point. Matters are not made more easy from the fact that monopoly and protection direct her national and commercial policy.

Bounties for Industries.

The establishment of factories and industries in Japan is a matter which causes the government much preoccupation. It is sought by bounties to foster and. encourage Infant industries, and in Manchuria there is much grumbling over the preferential position Japanese control of the railway achieves for Japanese goods. So far the number of operatives, male and female, in Japan is but small —793,885 —as compared with her total population of 63,000,000. But the statistics published by the Economical and financial Annual of the department of finance. 1913, afford mnch food for reflection when taken in conjunction with the actual conditions of life and labor revealed by a visit to a .Japanese mill. According to these returns there are in Japan 305,196 male operatives over fourteen years of age, and 427,676 women. Under fourteen years of age there are 12,192 males and 48,821 females employed. The dominant industries in Japan are cotton and silk, and they absorb the largest proportion of the workers, namely, 448,243 persons, male and female. In raw silk, cotton spinning, and cotton weaving we find employed 46,496 men and 293,468.w0men. In the thirty-two'Japanese cotton mills for which returns are given the average □lumber of working days per annum was 325, and the average number of wfklng hours per day was 22.44. The two great centers of industrial activity are Tokyo and Osaka. I penetrated, not . without considerable difficulty, into various cotton in Japan. Women and Children In Factories. speaking, Japanese women engage in the cotton trade work under contracts essentially servile In character- They are Indentured for a 'perted-®*'4hree'y«ajs,'«nd Dounda attached to the factory. Dur-

ing this term they seldom leave tba compound, and cannot, save under very exceptional circumstances, break their indentures. Sunday, of course, is not kept in the far East; the principle of one day’s rest in seven does not obtain there. The cotton factories work day and night on shifts of IS hours each, and there are two holidays in the month, more, one suspects, for the needs of the machinery than that of the human beings. The average daily wage of the female silk spinner is 30 sen (say 14 cents), and of the female weaver 25 sen. But from this sum nine sen Is deducted dally for food.

Compounds and factories alike vary in cleanliness and comfort. Some factories are well constructed and well ventilated and filled with machinery coming from Oldham. Others are dirty, dilapidated and ramshackle. It is the same with the compounds. When a factory has to provide accommodation for 1,000 or 2,000 women operatives we may well scrutinize the conditions, even when the.altogether simple standard of life in the far East Is taken Into account The Japanese have no beds, but sleep rolled up in quilts on the floor. In one compound I visited, I saw 24 girls asleep In a dormitory 24 by 13 feet, and this-is no uncommon state of affairs. Phthisis is a disease which is beginning to play havoc In the cotton mills, and when.

as In many cases, girls employed on the day and night shifts use the same dormitories and no proper ventilation is possible, it is easy to understand the spread of this dread scourge. The Japanese women are fragile little creatures, whose appearance does not encourage the idea that they can be tossed without protection Into the fierce stream of industrial competition. These girls, drawn as they are from the farming and fishing class, often return home utterly broken la health at the efid of their indentures. Some factories cater for the health and even amusement of their operatives. In one compound I saw a thentor and also a shrine erected to the memory of those who died in the mills. Hospitals, unfortunately, are necessary adjuncts, some clean and wellmanaged, others slack and dirty. In one compound there would be a strip of garden nicely kept with flowers, in another a dank, depressing yard. Even at the best, who could wish for a young girl to spend three of- the best years of her life under such conditions? But the Japanese daughter has few rights over her own person. If her family is poor, up to the present she has resigned herself to the fate to which her parents may consign her, being practically sold by them either to factory, geisha house, or the deeper degradation of the yoshiwara. That the girls themselves are beginning to revolt against such condition# is a healthy and desirable sign of the times in Japan. The difficulty of obtaining cheap labor may lead to a reform of factory life from within. Though living-in is the rule for women, it is not invariable, and 1 saw an# factory where a large proportion of women lived out Here arose the diff ferent evil of the employment of married women, this particular factory having a nursery attached where the women left their babies. But unquestionably there, was a less coarse, hopeless look about the women who lived, 1 out and had some redeeming influences of home in thetr lives than what one noticed about the listless girls of the compounds. This circumstance, struck me Very forcible In a very dirty match factory, where all the girls lived) at home. Despite fee conditions under which they worked and fee long^, Ipqkajn^silt. or ill nourished. *

COTTON MILL IN KOBE.