"What do you make of it?" he asked Kittrick a few days later. "It is up to us to know all this that's going on all about us. It's widespread. It's important. It has a vital bearing on the future of Japan, and still it's so intangible, so oddly impossible to get at. Is it just an intermittent phase, or is it a growing movement that will slowly but surely result in fruit of some kind,—revolution or what?"
"Of course, I've been wanting to follow it, just as you have," said Kittrick. "But what can one do? If you try to learn from the agitators, no matter how innocent may be your intentions, the police will soon make it impossible for you. One may get a little by following the Japanese papers, watching the straws that show which way the wind blows. Here you see a big appropriation for special officers to watch over 'dangerous thoughts'; here's an item about a special force to guard the persons of cabinet ministers.
"The point is that Japan is discarding her old beliefs, political, social, ethical, religious, the whole business, and she is in a breathless hurry to grab at anything, any kind of belief, or philosophy, or political creed that comes handy. Of course it's a mix-up. The political unrest may be dangerous in so far as it leads excited fanatics to take too literally what they read or hear, so they prize a knife or a bomb and sally forth to become heroes or martyrs, but there is no great amount of sound sense or definite program in it.
"When the people stand up and shout for this thing or the other, you'll find that the real underlying cause is entirely economic. A few years ago Japan's industrial system was patriarchal. The boss had a little shop with half a dozen or a dozen workmen. He fed them, and clothed them and looked after them, paterfamilias fashion, did their thinking for them, and they were quite satisfied. That was all they knew. Now has come the big factory system, where thousands work in great plants and never see the owner. The personal relation has been lost. Then they've heard that workmen in other countries have better conditions. During the war, when workers must be had at any price to fill the orders from abroad that swamped the factories, they learned to strike for high pay—and got it. They've learned a lot of other things, 'sabotage,' 'go slow,' unionism, that labor may have a voice in factory control, all that sort of thing. They see the rich grow richer, and are learning that they ought to have a share of those profits. Most of them think that Russia is a little paradise for the workmen. It's not the political side that interests them, it's better conditions. They have learned to look upon capitalism collectively and on labor collectively. Their unions are becoming more and more consolidated. The next thing you'll see nation-wide strikes.
"And in the meantime the economic situation grows worse every day. Japan has lost her foreign markets, so she closes factories. The capitalists insist on dividends, so, as they can't make money abroad, they insist on keeping prices high on home products by keeping production just a bit lower than the demand. That means closing more factories, discharging more workmen, unemployment. If they kick too much, they give them discharge allowances, six months' pay, a year's pay, anything to avoid a row—and, of course, the consumer pays for it, and prices go higher, while the workmen retire to the country villages they came from and blow their allowances and then live on their relatives. The family system of helping relatives is saving the situation to-day. That's why you don't hear much trouble yet from unemployment, but as the number increases of idlers whom each worker must support, the condition grows worse. The end must come some day."
CHAPTER XI
The situation grew on Kent's nerves. Every morning when he looked out from his window, he half expected to see red flags in the streets, to hear the turmoil of mobs. It was absurd, he told himself. There were sure to be warnings, minor tumults, evidences of strained unrest. Still, he felt that he must spare no time in getting inside the facts as soon as possible, to come to see every side of the comprehensive picture.
It would be a good idea to become acquainted with the capitalistic side of the story. He began a round of calls on the money kings, captains of industry, the owners of names which recurred constantly in the news of economic events. For days he wandered about in the lairs of plutocracy, sent his card in to dozens of men, wasted hours in bleak waiting rooms with their scant furnishing of variegated chairs and tables, dusty curtains and innumerable ash trays, smoked idly while hundreds of clerks ran about, like bees in huge hives, or sat smoking and drinking tea. But the great men were always out of the city, or sick, or attending funerals of relatives. There was courtesy everywhere. Would he not see such and such a secretary or third vice-president instead? When he insisted, they shook their heads, a bit surprised at the effrontery of this stranger who thought that he might thus easily gain speech with the great ones. They were amusingly absurd, these foreigners, seemed to be their thought. It was as if he had marched into Buckingham Palace and demanded an interview with King George. He knew that he could probably make his way into even these hallowed sanctums, should he obtain letters of introduction from the Foreign Office, which was always most obliging in such matters. He know that letters of introduction held an exaggerated value, were regarded as almost indispensable by the Japanese themselves. But they aroused his resentment, these haughty, purse-proud plutocrats. Evidently talking to the press was the last thing they desired. Well, let them go to blazes then; if they did not want him to have their side of the story. He'd get it elsewhere.