what is the real as compared with the seeming return of the industry
to a nation the strength of which is in its reservoir of rustic health
and willingness. It is significant of the extent to which the
factories are working with cheap labour that, in a country in which
there are more men than women,[149] there was in about 20,000
factories 58 per cent. of female labour. If I stress the fact of
female employment it is because in Japan nearly every woman
eventually marries. Enfeebled women must therefore hand on
enfeeblement to the next generation.[150]

The Japanese, in their present factory system, as in other
developments, insist on making for themselves all the mistakes that we
have made and are now ashamed of. In judging the Japanese let us
remember that all our industrial exploitation of women[151] was not,
as we like to believe, an affair as far off as the opening nineteenth
century. I do not forget as a young man filling a newspaper poster
with the title of an article which recounted from my own observation
the woes of women chain makers who, with bared breasts and their
infants sprawling in the small coals, slaved in domestic smithies for
a pittance. And as I write it is announced that the head of the United
States Steel Corporation says that "there is no necessity for trade
unions," which are, in his opinion, "inimical to the best interests of
the employers and the public." That is precisely the view of most
Japanese factory proprietaries.

The trade union is not illegal in Japan, but its teeth have been drawn
(1) by the enactment that "those who, with the object of causing a
strike, seduce or incite others" shall be sentenced to imprisonment
from one to six months with a fine of from 3 to 30 yen; (2) by the
power given to the police (_a_) to detain suspected persons for a