r will produce
much the same result in Japan. Already wages, astonishingly low as
they are to-day to an ordinary American, have increased 40 per cent,
in the last eight or ten years, this increase being partly due to the
general cheapening of money the world over, and partly also to the
increased efficiency of the average laborer.

Unfortunately, however, Japan is not content to rely upon natural law
for the development of its manufactures. Adam {30} Smith said in his
"Wealth of Nations" (published the year of our American Declaration of
Independence), that the policy of all European nations since the
downfall of the Roman Empire had been to help manufacturing, the
industry of the towns, rather than agriculture, the industry of the
country--a policy in which America later imitated Europe. Japan now
follows suit. For a long time the government has paid enormous
subsidies to shipbuilding and manufacturing corporations, and now a
high tariff has been enacted, which will still further increase the
cost of living for the agricultural classes, comprising, as they do,
two thirds of the country's population.

"'With your cheap labor and all the colossal Oriental market right at
your door," I said to Editor Shihotsu of the _Kokumin Shimbun_ a day
or two ago, "what excuse is there for further dependence on the
government? What can be the effect of your new tariff except to
increase the burdens of the farmer for the benefit of the
manufacturer?" And while defending the policy, he admitted that I had
stated the practical effect of the policy. "They are domestic
consumption duties," was his phrase; and Count Okuma, one of the
empire's ablest men, once Minister of Agriculture, has also pointed
out how injuriously the new law will affect the masses of the people.

"Some would argue," he said in a speech at Osaka, "that the duties are
paid by the country from which the goods are imported. That this is
not the case is at once seen by the fact that an increase in duty
means a rise in the price of an article in the country imposing the
duty, and this to the actual consumer often amounts to more than the
rise in the duty. In these cases consumers pay the duty themselves;
and the customs revenues, so far from being a national asset, are
merely another form of taxation paid by the people." And the masses in
Japan, already staggering under the enormous burden of an average tax
amounting to 32 per cent, of their earnings (on account of thei