THE MATSUYAMA WORKING GIRLS' HOME
The origin and history of the Matsuyama Working Girls' Home cannot be
told apart from the story of the man who has been its heart and life,
Mr. Shinjiro Omoto. Born in 1872 and graduating from the common school
at fourteen, he at once went into business, first as an apprentice and
later with his father. At nineteen he opened a sugar store, which
flourished and before long overshadowed the father's business. Money
came in so easily that he soon entered on a life of licentiousness, and
for several years he was as famous for his drunken carousals as he had
been for his phenomenal business success. His parents cut him off,
refused him admittance to the house, and for years he did not even speak
to his father.
[Illustration: MATSUYAMA WORKING GIRLS' HOME
GIRLS IN THE MATSUYAMA HOME]
In 1899, we held a preaching service in a theater. Mr. Omoto happened to
be drinking in the saloon opposite. Hearing of our gathering, with some
rowdy comrades, he thought he would break it up, with the result that we
experienced persistent opposition throughout the meeting. But the
sermons on Pessimism and the New Life, and my statement of the reasons
that had brought me to Japan attracted his attention, and the next day I
received an anonymous letter asking for tracts. These seem to have
produced a profound impression, particularly the tract entitled "Two
Young Men." It told of two hardened prisoners who had been transformed
by the gospel and became highly useful and well-known members of
society. Mr. Omoto thereupon set himself definitely to learn about
Christianity, but privately, unwilling to make public his new hope. He
bought and read through, quite by himself, the entire New Testament.
Though he gained some idea of the gospel, he soon found he had lost none
of his passion for drink. After a while he went to Kobe and joined a
temperance society; but soon finding that the society had members who
broke their pledges, he began to break his. In despair he went to
Okayama and tried to join himself to Mr. Ishii, head of the well-known
Christian orphanage, asking to be made a Christian, but he was told to
return to Matsuyama and join the church there in his old home; only so
could he be saved. Greatly disappointed, he returned and called on me
early in June, 1901, but without telling fully about himself. He also
called on Mr. Nishimura, an earnest Christian worker, who prayed with
him, telling him that to be saved he must receive the Holy Spirit.
That summer, quite exceptionally, I returned in the middle of the
vacation. Mr. Omoto appeared at the prayer-meeting for the first time
and was evidently in a state of great excitement, so much so that only
with difficulty could we understand his remarks and his prayer. The gist
was that he had that day received the Holy Spirit, that he was now
saved, and that his joy was too great for utterance. Tears rolled down
his cheeks as he talked and prayed. After the meeting I had a few words
with him, and urged him to ally himself with our experienced workers. He
was so excited that I feared for him, and wondered whether this might
not be a tornado of emotion due to drink and to the nervous condition
incident to his riotous life, an emotion which he mistook for the gift
of the Holy Spirit. I urged him to begin at once to live the Christian
life, cutting loose from all bad companions and bad habits.
To gain an honest living he entered the Matsuyama Cotton Thread Spinning
Factory. This required twelve hours of work daily, sometimes by day and
sometimes by night, a hard pull for one who had done no steady work for
years. He attended Christian services faithfully, so far as his hours of
work allowed, and became quite intimate with two or three of our best
Christians. Before long he began to talk about the wretched conditions
and immoral life of the factory girls, telling us of the situation
already described in Chapter IX.[9] His first thought was to give these
tired children wholesome recreation. He secured the use of our preaching
place in the vicinity of the factory and invited the girls to attend
what he called the Dojokwai (Sympathy Society). He soon persuaded the
girls to add a little reading and writing to their play, and later also,
sewing. These meetings had of course to be held after the twelve or more
hours of work in the factory had been completed. Care had also to be
taken that the studies and the fun should not absorb time needed for
sleep. Membership in the Sympathy Society rose rapidly and soon numbered
seventy girls.
[9] See pages 67-69. (Transcriber's note: See starting at "In
1901, when Mr. Omoto began to work in the factory, he was
amazed to see how many were the children taking their turns
in work along with the older girls by day and by night.")
At first meetings were held only in the evening three times a week, and
lasted but an hour. But as the educational element of the society
developed, others were induced to help and every evening save Sunday
was occupied. In order that girls on the night shift might continue
their studies similar classes were also held from seven to nine o'clock
in the morning. Before six months had passed the play aspect of the
society was largely superseded by the educational.
But opposition of Buddhists now began to show itself. A few parents
refused to let their girls attend. The most determined opposition
however came from the manager in the factory who had charge of one of
the shifts. Members of that shift were so treated that gradually they
dropped out of the Dojokwai, and new members from that shift could not
be secured. The hostile manager was however himself dropped some months
later, and all opposition to the work from within the factory ceased.
In a previous chapter we have noted the facts discovered by Mr. Omoto as
he went the rounds of the boarding-houses in which the girls were
required to live.[10] As these conditions became clearer and more
appallingly impressive, he began to say with increasing frequency and
insistence that the Sympathy Society, however successful, could not do
what was needed. Only a Christian home would answer. Not only do the
girls need to learn to read and write and sew, but even more than these
do they need a home free from temptation, clean and pure and helpful,
and elevating morally and religiously. The difficulties however in the
way of such an enterprise seemed insuperable. To say nothing of the
financial problem, a still greater obstacle, it was felt, was the
securing of "recognition" from the factory, for Buddhist influence in
the factory was at that time still dominant. During these months the
Sympathy Society was winning its way among the girls and their parents,
and Mr. Omoto himself was learning valuable lessons.
[10] See pages 68, 69. (Transcriber's note: See starting at
"they were crowded together in disease-spreading and
vermin-breeding, immoral boarding-houses, where they
were deliberately tempted.")
One was that the girls were not all eager to be in a Christian home. We
of course forbade all drinking, irregular hours, and more irregular
"friendships." Attendance on prayers, night and morning, and at the
school, was required. It looked for a time as if we should fail, for
lack of girls to meet the expenses.
But in spite of discouragements we kept on. The earnings of the girls
who lived in the home, for the first year, were 1,361 yen. Of this sum
they paid for board 905 yen, and sent to their parents 456, whereas
girls in the other boarding-houses were able to save nothing, although
the amount paid for board was the same in all the houses, being fixed by
the factory at 3.60 yen per month, or twelve sen (six cents) per day.
In February, 1903, a representative of the government who came from
Tokyo to inspect the conditions of labor in western Japan, heard of the
Dojokwai (Sympathy Home), and was so much interested in the story of its
work that he took time to visit it with several local officials. He was
greatly pleased, for he knew of nothing just like this, in any other
part of Japan, particularly in its hygienic, educational, and moral
advantages, and he expressed the wish that there might be many such.
This was our first notice from government officials.
As time went on, Mr. Omoto was found by the factory officials to be
exceptionally faithful to its interests; he was rapidly promoted from
one position to another, and in December of the same year was made
"visitor" and "employing agent." This required him to visit neighboring
towns and villages and collect new girls when needed. He tried to
decline this work, saying that he could make no false promises to the
girls or to their parents, nor in any way delude them as to the nature
of their work, the amount of their wages, the conditions of the
boarding-houses; being strictly a temperance man, also, he could not
treat with sake (sah'-ke) and so get into friendly relations, all of
which things employing agents constantly do; he had no expectations of
gaining any recruits; the factory would better send some one else. They
told him at least to try. To the surprise of all, and of himself the
most, from his first trip he brought back with him fifteen girls. For
three years he continued in this work and was always successful in
securing girls for the factory. Because of his refusal to touch liquor
in any form, his traveling expenses were much less than those of other
employing agents, much to the satisfaction of the management; and the
girls he secured on the whole remained longer and more contentedly at
work, because he had always told them the truth. This made his position
in the factory more secure and influential. After about two years'
employment by the day he was promoted to the rank of a regular employee
and paid by the month. His hours of official service were also largely
reduced in order that he might have time for his educational and
Christian work in the Home--a striking testimony of appreciation on the
part of the factory officials.
As the months passed by it gradually became clear that the effectiveness
as well as the permanence of the work demanded suitable quarters. The
heavy rental paid for the house made self-support impossible. Results
already attained seemed to warrant appeal to friends for gifts, for the
purpose of buying land and the erection of a building. Responses to our
appeals provided the needed funds, land was purchased and a contract
made with a carpenter on exceptionally favorable terms, just two days
before the opening of the Russo-Japanese war (February, 1904).
Immediately prices went up by leaps and bounds; but our contract was so
well made and the carpenter had already made such full subcontracts for
the lumber, etc., that we were not troubled because of war prices.
As we entered our new quarters in June, 1904, however, the factory shut
down the main part of its work and discharged the majority of its
workers. This was a severe blow to the Home. The occupants were reduced
to seven girls. Although the factory opened again after a few months,
the conditions during and after the war made it difficult for the
factory to secure girls, and the Home, together with the other
boarding-houses, suffered from lack of boarders. Beginning with March,
1907, however, special circumstances combined to fill the Home to its
utmost capacity; during the three months of April, May, and June thirty
applicants were refused admittance and as many more who desired to enter
the school were declined.
Increasing acquaintance with the disastrous effects of factory
labor,--the lint-filled air so often producing consumption, and the
excessive heat of summer sometimes resulting even in sunstroke,--made
Mr. Omoto unwilling to persuade girls to enter upon such a life. The
needs of the Home also pressed upon his time. These considerations led
him, in 1906, to give up his work in the factory altogether, in order to
devote his entire time and strength to the Home and to the upbuilding of
the moral and religious life of the girls.
In July, 1906, Mr. Omoto attended in Osaka the first convention of
factory officials convened to study the problem of the proper care of
operatives. Representatives were present from sixteen factories having
night schools, and specimens of the work of the girls were compared. Mr.
Omoto was fairly lionized because of the superior quality of the work
sent in from our Home and many newspapers made special mention of him
and his work.
In September, 1908, there was held in Tokyo under the auspices of the
Home Department of the Imperial government an eight weeks' school of
applied sociology. Mr. Omoto was among the 376 persons who attended.
Again he received exceptional attention and was asked to tell his story.
At this school no less than thirty-six learned specialists gave lectures
on every conceivable topic suitable for such a school. Among the
speakers so many were professed Christians, and of the rest so many
advocated such markedly Christian ideals, that some Buddhists are said
to have taken offense, regarding the whole affair as a part of the
Christian propaganda.
In the spring of 1909 there occurred an event of considerable
significance. Without a preliminary hint of what was happening, Mr.
Omoto saw in the paper one day the amazing statement that the Matsuyama
Working Girls' Home, along with seventy-nine other selected institutions
throughout the country, was the recipient of a specified sum (200 yen)
as a mark of government approval! A total of 40,000 yen were thus
distributed in varying amounts, Christian institutions being recognized
to an unexpected degree. Later, word came from the Prefectural Office
summoning him to receive the gift. In the entire prefecture six
institutions had been thus honored, and of these, two were Christian.
This gift from the Department of the Interior has been repeated each
year since.
Again in May, 1910, a Conference of Social Service Workers (Chu-o Jizen
Kyokwai) was held at Nagoya at the time of the Exposition, and Mr.
Omoto was among those invited to attend. His address and statistical
report received much attention. Mr. Tomeoka, representative of the
government and chairman of the conference, spoke in unstinted praise of
the work of the Home, which he characterized as "Kokka Jigyo" (a
national enterprise), and recommended the adoption by others of several
of its special features.
In the spring of 1911, the Home Department of the central government
published a small volume describing one hundred and thirteen model
philanthropic institutions of the country, in which we were of course
pleased to see that the Home was included, being the only one from the
prefecture.
As opportunity offered and means were available, following the advice of
friends, four small adjacent lots were purchased, one of which we were
almost forced to secure for self-protection, because of the evil
character of the buildings upon it. We now own altogether about two
acres of land on the north side of the beautiful Castle Hill, around
which Matsuyama is built. Here have been erected at different times six
buildings (three of them two-storied), for residential, dormitory,
chapel, night school, weaving, hospital, bath, and other purposes. We
have space for a playground, of which the girls joyously avail
themselves, after returning from twelve hours of confinement in the dust
and clatter of machinery. The garden, too, provides fresh vegetables of
an assured character at a minimum of expense, adding much to the variety
and the wholesomeness of the diet. The present value of the property is
more than its original cost, for land and buildings are constantly
rising in price, as is the case in other parts of the country.
The city educational authorities in 1906 asked Mr. Omoto to open his
night school to the poor of the district. For this he had to have a
regular school license from the National Bureau of Education at Tokyo.
This was to be a Christian school--the only license of exactly that
kind in the empire, he was told.
Industrial newspapers have been noticing the Home and its work for some
time.[11] During the past five years the favorable attitude of local and
national government officials has been particularly pronounced.
Government inspectors have repeatedly been sent from the Prefectural
Office and occasionally even from Tokyo to visit the Home. One such
expressed himself as amazed at the excellent mental work done by the
girls, in view of the fact that all their study takes place after twelve
hours of toil. Nothing but good food, sufficient sleep, and a wholesome
and happy home life could account for their splendid health and superior
school work. One man remarked that the girls in the Home do better work
than pupils in the same grade in public schools.
[11] See page 149. (Transcriber's note: See starting at "Mr. Omoto
was fairly lionized because of the superior quality of the
work sent in from our Home")
Even so early as the autumn of 1906 the Home Department of the central
government sent down special instructions to the prefectural office in
Matsuyama to investigate our work, with the result that of nine
benevolent institutions throughout Japan selected for commendation, ours
was the one most carefully described and unqualifiedly praised. A recent
government pamphlet concerning industrial problems makes special
reference, covering two pages, to the work of the Home. Thus has a small
institution begun to serve as a model for the country.
The good health of the girls in our Home has been in strong contrast
with the health of those in other boarding-houses, even in the best
dormitories of the best factories in other cities.
Statistics recently compiled by the government show that the average
death-rate among factory operatives throughout the country is
extraordinarily high. The highest, fifty per cent. on account of an
epidemic, was reported from a certain factory owned and managed
boarding-house in Niigata prefecture. Not one girl has ever died in our
Home. Of the 301 girls who had lived in our Home by 1911, only eight,
all told, died.
In 1912 the Home passed through a crisis that threatened to destroy it.
Late in 1911 the one factory in Matsuyama, where all the girls worked,
was sold out to parties living in Osaka. A new manager was sent down who
introduced many drastic changes. The change most affecting us was the
stopping of the night work and the lengthening of day work to fourteen
hours: namely, from 6 A.M. till 8 P.M.
The girls in the Home soon became dissatisfied, and not many months
passed before all had left the factory. Mr. Omoto was urged by the
manager to find and bring in new girls. He refused however on the ground
that he could not ask anybody to work such brutally long hours.
Had it not been for a little weaving department with which we had
already been experimenting, the Home would have been compelled to close.
More looms were secured and those girls who wished to remain with us
were given opportunity for work. Mr. Omoto's attention was at that time
directed to the condition of the weaving girls in the scores and even
hundreds of little establishments in the city and its suburbs. He soon
found that an educational, economic, moral, and religious condition
existed among them not unlike that which he had found among the factory
girls of Matsuyama a dozen years before. The weaving establishments are,
as a rule, small private affairs, usually having less than ten girls
each, and are therefore wholly outside of the supervision of the
government. The treatment of workers and the hours of labor are entirely
settled by the individual owners.
As a rule the girls are apprenticed for from two to three years
immediately on leaving the primary school, at an age therefore of twelve
or thirteen. They barely earn their living, although they work from
daybreak to ten or eleven at night, and in some establishments even till
midnight--from fifteen to eighteen hours a day! There are no night
shifts and rare holidays on occasional festivals. The hygienic and moral
conditions are about as bad as can be. It is estimated that one half of
the girls are ruined before the close of their apprenticeship. Our Home
is now deliberately attacking the new problem, which in many respects is
more difficult than was the old one. We have put up two small buildings
on our own grounds, enabling us to have thirty looms to give opportunity
for work to thirty girls.
The uniform quality of the cloth produced by our girls, the central
portions of each piece equaling the ends in quality, shows unflagging
moral attention, without effort to rush the work and stint the material;
this has already won such approval from merchants that the "Sympathy
Home" brand can be sold for a little more than other brands, and Mr.
Omoto is assured that there is no limit to the amount which could be
marketed.
An owner of several weaving establishments has become so impressed with
the quality of the work and the character developed in our girls that
he asked Mr. Omoto if he would not take charge of a hundred of his
weaving girls. This new departure is especially promising, for we have
complete supervision of the girls throughout the entire twenty-four
hours. The girls, moreover, are already remaining in our Home as a rule
much longer than they used to when getting work in the spinning factory.
As successive chapters of this book have shown, no more urgent problem
faces New Japan than that of the moral development of her workers. This
is particularly true of the hundreds of thousands of girls in the larger
and smaller factories and industrial establishments. The wretched
physical, economic, social, and moral conditions under which the
majority of these girls lived and worked at the time when our Home was
started are not easily described.
Many of the factory authorities[12] are neither ignorant nor unmindful
of the situation, and are striving to remedy it. The government also has
enacted laws not a few. But laws and official actions alone provide no
adequate solution of the serious problems raised by the extraordinary
industrial and social transformations sweeping over Japan. A new spirit
must be evoked, both on the part of capital and labor, and new moral
ideals and relations established. This cannot be done by laws alone.
Only love and contagious personal example are sufficient for the needs.
[12] It is not to be inferred from the statements in this book
that the political leaders and the organizers of
industrial Japan have been dependent on our Home for
ideas and ideals in regard to the problems raised by
modern industry. Many of those leaders are men of
cosmopolitan education and are well versed in the best
and most recent of literature of the West on these
matters. It is true, however, that our Home has been an
important concrete experiment affording in Japan
valuable suggestions and stimulus.
Our Home was designed to meet just such a situation and has to a
remarkable degree, we think, succeeded. It has provided not only
sufficient fresh air, nourishing food, adequate bedding, clean rooms,
and wholesome recreation, but also moral and religious instruction, and
some education. The girls in our Home have enjoyed conspicuously better
health and have done better work and earned and sent to their parents
more money than those of the other boarding-houses of Matsuyama. But
better than these have been the educational, moral, and religious
results. Their womanhood has been raised. They have been better fitted
for life's duties and for motherhood than they would have been without
the training which has been given them.
Moreover, the results of the Home have been such as to break down
opposition. The good-will and cooperation of the factory officials were
won. Factories in other parts of the country also have recognized our
Home as presenting a splendid ideal which, in a measure, many of them
are already following. The local and the central governments, as already
shown, have repeatedly sent officials to inspect us, and in their
reports have not only praised us, but have described our Home in detail,
saying that we have solved the difficult problem of how to care for
factory hands.
Through the Home we are reaching the lowest strata of the working
classes of Japan, and are providing them with ideals, motives, and
education, and in a way, too, which does not tend to pauperize them, for
each girl pays as board a sum sufficient to cover actual living
expenses. It is also exerting an influence on the townsfolk. The
attitude of the people toward Christianity has undergone a marked
change. Villages in the interior likewise have altered their attitude on
seeing how their daughters, graduates of our Home, have improved both in
intelligence and character, in marked contrast to those who have been in
other boarding-houses. All in all, Mr. Omoto has attained remarkable
success. He is absorbed, heart and soul, in his work of bettering the
moral and religious conditions of the working girls of Japan, and is a
man continuously growing in spiritual life, Christian character, and
knowledge of men. I have never known a man more thoroughly converted or
more enthusiastic in his chosen field of work. The Omoto of to-day is a
different person from the reformed debauchee of thirteen years ago, who
began this service for factory girls as the outcome of his sincere
question, "Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?" His family have become
possessed with the idea of social service, and his five children are
being brought up in this atmosphere and in the fear of the Lord.
Thus has the Matsuyama Working Girls' Home survived many threatening
vicissitudes, attained conspicuous successes, and is now embarked on a
new line of endeavor. May it exceed in the future its successes of the
past and make still more substantial contributions to the uplift of the
working women of Japan!
* * * * * *
Transcriber's note:
Text in italics is enclosed by underscores (_italics_).
Text in small capitals was replaced with ALL UPPER CASE.
The illustrations have been moved so that they do not break up
paragraphs and so that they are next the text they illustrate.
Thus the page number of the illustration might not match the page
number in the List of Illustrations.
Errors in punctuations and inconsistent hyphenation were not
corrected except for the following:
On page 111, the book mentions "among the forty-eight prefectures
of the Japanese empire", but there were forty-seven prefectures
since 1888.