wants of his own family is spun and woven by the female members
thereof, but a surplus is also produced for sale.

Several spinning factories with important English machinery have been
established during the last twenty years, but Consul Longford says
that he has only known of one similar cotton-weaving factory, and that
has not been a successful experiment. Other so called weaving
factories throughout the country consist only of a collection of the
ordinary hand looms, to the number of forty or fifty, scarcely ever
reaching to one hundred, in one building or shed, wherein individual
manufacturers have their own special piece goods made.

The first operation in the manufacture is that of ginning, which is
conducted by means of a small implement called the _rokuro_, or
windlass. This consists of two wooden rollers revolving in opposite
directions, fixed on a frame about 12 inches high and 6 inches in
width, standing on a small platform, the dimensions of which slightly
exceed that of the frame. The operator, usually a woman, kneels on one
side of the frame, holding it firm by her weight, works the roller
with one hand, and with the other presses the cotton, which she takes
from a heap at her side, between the rollers. The cotton passes
through, falling in small lumps on the other side of the frame, while
the seeds fall on that nearest the woman. The utmost weight of
unginned cotton that one woman working an entire day of ten hours can
give is from 8 lb. to 10 lb., which gives, in the end, only a little
over 3 lb. weight of ginned cotton, and her daily earnings amount to
less than 2d. A few saw gins have been introduced into Japan during
the last fifteen years, but no effort has been made to secure their
distribution throughout the country districts. After ginning, a
certain proportion of the seed is reserved for the agricultural