elopments, insist on making for themselves all the mistakes that we
have made and are now ashamed of. In judging the Japanese let us
remember that all our industrial exploitation of women[151] was not,
as we like to believe, an affair as far off as the opening nineteenth
century. I do not forget as a young man filling a newspaper poster
with the title of an article which recounted from my own observation
the woes of women chain makers who, with bared breasts and their
infants sprawling in the small coals, slaved in domestic smithies for
a pittance. And as I write it is announced that the head of the United
States Steel Corporation says that "there is no necessity for trade
unions," which are, in his opinion, "inimical to the best interests of
the employers and the public." That is precisely the view of most
Japanese factory proprietaries.

The trade union is not illegal in Japan, but its teeth have been drawn
(1) by the enactment that "those who, with the object of causing a
strike, seduce or incite others" shall be sentenced to imprisonment
from one to six months with a fine of from 3 to 30 yen; (2) by the
power given to the police (_a_) to detain suspected persons for a
succession of twenty-four hour periods, and (_b_) summarily to close
public meetings, and (3) by the franchise being so narrow that few
trade unionists have votes. During the six years of the War there were
as many as 141,000 strikers, but a not uncommon method of these
workers was merely to absent themselves from work, to refrain from
working while in the factory, or to "ca' canny." Nevertheless 633 of
them were arrested. When I attended in Tokyo a gathering of members of
the leading labour organisation in Japan it was discreetly named
Yu-ai-kai (Friend-Love-Society, i.e. Friendly Society). Now it is
boldly called the Confederation of Japanese Labour. A Socialist
League[152] and several labour publications exist. Workers assemble to
see moving pictures of labour demonstrations, and a labour meeting has
defied the police in attendance by singing the whole of the "Song of
Revolution." But crippled as the unions are under the law against
strikes and by the poverty of the workers, they find it difficult to
attain the financial strength necessary for effective action. Many
workers are trade unionists when they are striking but their trade
unionism lapses when the strike is over, for then the unions seem to
have small reason for existing. The head of the Fe