were in competition for skilled girls, and money was given by a
_kemban_ intent on stealing another factory's hand.

The novices had no contract. The contract of a skilled girl provided
that she should serve at the factory for a specified period and that
if she failed to do so, she should pay back twenty times the 5 yen or
whatever sum had been advanced to her. Obviously 100 yen would be a
prohibitive sum for a peasant's daughter to find. The amount of the
workers' pay was not specified in the contract. The document was
plainly one-sided and would be regarded in an English court as against
public policy and unenforceable. Married women might take an infant
with them to the factory. In more than one factory I saw several
thin-faced babies.

The effect of factory life on girls, a man who knew the countryside
well told me, was "not good." The girls had weakened constitutions as
the result of their factory life and when they married had fewer than
the normal number of children. The general result of factory life was
degeneration. The girls "corrupted their villages."

The custom was, I understood, that the girls were kept on the factory
premises except when they could allege urgent business in town. But
they were allowed out on the three nights of the _Bon_ festival. It
was rare that priests visited the factories and there were no shrines
there. The girls had sometimes "lessons" given them and occasionally
story-tellers or gramophone owners amused them. The food supplied by
some factories was not at all adequate and the girls had to spend
their money at the factory tuck-shops. "Most proprietors," I was told,
"endeavour to make part of their staff permanent by acting as
middlemen to arrange marriages between female and male workers." The
infants of married workers were "looked after by the youngest
apprentices."

In another place I saw over a factory which employed about 160 girls,
who were worked from 5:30 a.m. to 6:40 p.m. with twenty minutes for
each meal. If a girl "broke her contract" it was the custom to send
her name to other factories so that she could not get work again. The
foremen at this establishment seemed decent men.

One who had no financial interest in the silk industry but knew the
district in which this second factory stood said that "many girls"
came home in trouble. The peasants did not like "the spoiling of their
daughters," but were "captured in their poverty by the idea of the
money to be gaine