supply work at the ruling market rates for the
work of the pitifully poor. Said one factory owner to me genially:
"Peasant families are accustomed to work from daylight to dark. In the
silk-worm feeding season they have almost no time for sleep. Peasant
people are trained to long hours. Lazy people might suffer from the
long hours of the factory, but the factory girls are not lazy."

It hardly needs to be pointed out that there is all the difference
between a long day at the varied work of a farm, even in the trying
silk-worm season, and a long day, for nine or ten months on end,
sitting still, with the briefest intervals for food, in the din and
heat of a factory. Such a life must be debilitating. When it is added
that in most factories, in the short period between supper and sleep,
and again during the night, the girls are closely crowded, no further
explanation is wanted of the origin of the tuberculosis which is so
prevalent in the villages which supply factory labour.[145] There is
no question that in the scanty moments the girls do have for an airing
most of them are immured within the compounds of their factories. A
large proportion of the many thousands of factory girls[146] who are
to be mothers of a new generation in the villages are passing years of
their lives in conditions which are bad for them physically and
morally. It must not be forgotten that very many of the girls go to
the factories before they are fully grown. On the question of
morality, evidence from disinterested quarters left no doubt on my
mind that the _morale_ of the girls was lowered by factory life. The
Lancashire factory girl goes home every evening and she has her
Saturday afternoon and her Sunday, her church or chapel, her societies
and clubs, her amusements and her sweetheart. Her Japanese sister has
none of this natural life and she has infinitely worse conditions of
labour.

It is only fair to remember, however, that the Japanese factory girl
comes from a distance. She has no relatives or friends in the town in
which she is working. But the plea that she would get into trouble if
she were allowed her liberty without control of any sort does not
excuse her present treatment. If the factories offered decent
conditions of life not a few of the companies would get at their doors
most of the labour they need and many of the girls would live at home.
If the factories insist on having cheap rural labour then they should
do their duty by i