America cannot compare, as a traveler, with the man of the people
in Japan And of course, in considering relative mobility of
populations, one must consider chiefly the great masses, the
workers,--not merely the small class of wealth. In their own
country, the Japanese are the greatest travelers of any civilized
people. They are the greatest travelers because, even in a land
composed mainly of mountain chains, they recognize no obstacles
to travel. The Japanese who travels most is not the man who needs
railways or steamers to carry him.

Now, with us, the common worker is incomparably less free than
the common worker in Japan. He is less free because of the more
complicated mechanism of Occidental societies, whose forces tend
to agglomeration and solid integration. He is less free because
the social and industrial machinery on which he must depend
reshapes him to its own particular requirements, and always so as
to evolve some special and artificial capacity at the cost of
other inherent capacity. He is less free because he must live at
a standard making it impossible for him to win financial
independence by mere thrift. To achieve any such independence, he
must possess exceptional character and exceptional faculties
greater than those of thousands of exceptional competitors
equally eager to escape from the same thralldom. In brief, then,
he is less independent because the special character of his
civilization numbs his natural power to live without the help of
machinery or large capital. To live thus artificially means to
lose, sooner or later, the power of independent movement. Before
a Western man can move he has many things to consider. Before a
Japanese moves he has nothing to consider. He simply leaves the
place he dislikes, and goes to the place he wishes, without any