t. The girls should have reasonable working hours,
proper sleeping accommodation and proper opportunities inside and
outside the factories for recreation and moral and mental improvement.
It is idle to suggest that fair treatment of this sort is impossible.
It is perfectly possible.

The factory proprietors are no worse than many other people intent on
money making. But the silk industry, as I saw it, was exploiting,
consciously or unconsciously, not only the poverty of its girl
employees but their strength, morality, deftness[147] and remarkable
school training in earnestness and obedience. Several times I heard
the unenlightened argument that, if there were a certain sacrifice of
health and well-being, a rapidly increasing population made the
sacrifice possible; that, as silk was the most valuable product in
Japan, and it was imperative for the development and security of the
Empire that its economic position should be strengthened, the
sacrifice must be made. Nothing need be said of such a hopelessly
out-of-date and nationally indefensible attitude except this: that it
is doubtful whether any considerable proportion of the people
connected with the silk industry have felt themselves specially
charged with a mission to strengthen the economic condition of their
country. They have simply availed themselves of a favourable
opportunity to make money. That opportunity was presented by the cheap
labour available in farmers' daughters unprotected by effective trade
unions, by properly administered factory laws or by public opinion.

II[148]

The enterprise, the efficiency and the profits shown by the
sericultural industry have been remarkable, and not a few of the
capitalists connected with it are personally public-spirited. But many
well-wishers of Japan, native-born and foreign, cannot help wondering
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
dev