FOOTNOTES:

[ [141] The times stated are those given to me in the factories. The question of overtime is referred to later in the Chapter.

[ [142] Again the reader must be reminded of the rise in wages and prices (estimated on p. xxv). During the recent period of inflation, silk rose to 3,000 yen per picul and fell to 1,300 or 1,400 yen. There have been great fluctuations in the wages of factory girls. At the most flourishing period as much as 25 yen per head was paid to recruiters of girls. In this Chapter, however, it is best to record exactly what I saw and heard.

[ [143] On the day on which I re-read this for the printers, I notice in an American paper that one of the largest employers of labour in the United States has just stated that he did not see his way to abolish the twelve-hours' day.

CHAPTER XIX

"FRIEND-LOVE-SOCIETY'S" GRIM TALE

The psychology of behaviour teaches us that

I

I do not think that some of the factory proprietors are conscious that they are taking undue advantage of their employees. These men are just average persons at the ante-Shaftesbury stage of responsibility towards labour.[ [144]] Their case is that the girls are pitifully poor and that the factories 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."