advantages as many of our people have been led to believe. In America
it has long been my conviction that cheap labor is never cheap; that
so-called "cheap labor" is a curse to any community--not because it is
cheap but because it is inefficient. The so-called cheap negro labor
in the South, for example, I have come to regard as perhaps the
dearest on the continent. Here in Japan, however, I was quite prepared
to find that this theory would not hold good. By reason of conditions
in a primitive stage of industrial organization, I thought that I
might find cheap labor with all the advantages, in so far as there are
any, and few of the disadvantages, encountered elsewhere. But it is
not so. An American factory owner in Osaka, summing up his Job's
trials with raw Japanese labor, used exactly my own phrase in a
newspaper article a few days ago, "Cheap labor is never cheap." And
all my investigations have convinced me that the remark is as
applicable in Japan as it is in America or England.
The per capita wages of Japanese laborers here are, of course,
amazingly low. The latest 1910 statistics, as furnished by the
Department of Finance, indicate a daily wage (American money) of 40
cents for carpenters, 31-1/2 cents for shoemakers, 34 cents for
blacksmiths, 25-1/2 cents for compositors, 19-1/2 cents for male farm
laborers, and 22 cents for male weavers, and 12 cents for female. In
the cotton factories I visited, those of the better sort, the wages
run from 5 cents a day for the youngest children to 25 cents a day for
good women workers. In a mousselaine mill I was told that the average
wages were 22-1/2 cents, ranging from 10 cents to a maximum of 50
cents for the most skilled employees. And this, be it remembered, was
{37} for eleven hours' work and in a factory requiring a higher grade
of efficiency than the average.
But in spite of the fact that such figures as these were well known to
him, it was my host in the first Japanese house to which I was
invited--one of the Emperor's privy councillors, and a man of much
travel and culture who had studied commercial conditions at home and
abroad rather profoundly--who expressed the conclusion that Japanese
factory labor when reduced to terms of efficiency is not greatly
cheaper than European, an opinion which has since grown rather trite
in view of the number of times that I have heard it. "In the old
handicrafts and family industries to which our people have been
accustomed," my host declared, "we can beat the world, but the moment
we turn to modern industrial machinery on a large scale the newness of
our endeavor tells against us in a hundred hindering ways. Numbers of
times I have sought to work out some industrial policy which had
succeeded, and could not but have succeeded, in England, Germany, or
America, only to meet general failure here because of the unconsidered
elements of a different environment, a totally different stage of
industrial evolution. Warriors from the beginning and with a record
for continuous government unsurpassed by any European country, our
political and military achievements are but the fruitage of our long
history, but in industry we must simply wait through patient
generations to reach the stage represented by the Englishman,
Irishman, or German, who takes to machinery as if by instinct."
All my investigations since have confirmed the philosophy of this
distinguished Japanese whose name, if I should mention it, would be
familiar to many in America and England. In the Tokyo branch of the
Kanegafuchi Spinning Company (a company which controls 300,000
spindles) the director, speaking from the experience of one of the
greatest and best conducted industries in Japan, declared: "Your
skilled factory laborers in America or England will work four sides of
a ring frame; our unskilled laborer may work only one." A young
Englishman in another factory declared: "It takes five men here to do
work that I and my mate would take care of at home." An American
vice-consul told me that it takes three or four times as much Japanese
as foreign labor to look after an equal number of looms. A Japanese
expert just back from Europe declared recently that "Lancashire labor
is more expensive than ours, but really cheaper." Similarly the Tokyo
correspondent of the London _Times_ summing up an eight-column review
of Japanese industry, observed: "If we go to the bottom of the
question and consider what is being paid as wages and what is being
obtained as the product of labor in Japan, we may find that Japanese
labor is not cheaper than in other countries."
{38}
II
My own conviction is that in actual output the Japanese labor is
somewhat cheaper than American or European labor, but not greatly so,
and that even this margin of excess in comparative cheapness
represents mainly a blood-tax on the lives and energies of the
Japanese people, the result of having no legislation to restrain the
ruinous overwork of women and little children--a grievous debt which
the nation must pay at the expense of its own stamina and which the
manufacturers must also pay in part through the failure to develop
experienced and able-bodied laborers. The latest "Japan Year Book"
expresses the view that "in per capita output two or three skilled
Japanese workers correspond to one foreign," but under present
conditions the difficulty here is to find the skilled workers at all.
When Mr. Oka, of the Department of Commerce and Agriculture, told me
that the average Japanese factory hand remains in the business less
than two years, I was astonished, but inquiry from original sources
confirmed the view. With the best system of welfare work in the
empire, the Kanegafuchi Company keeps its laborers two and a half {39}
to three years, but in a mill in Osaka of the better sort, employing
2500 hands, I was told that only 20 per cent, had been at work as long
as three years. Under such conditions, the majority of the operatives
at any time must be in a stage of deplorable inexperience, and it is
no wonder that the "Year Book" just quoted goes on to confess that
"one serious defect of the production is lack of uniformity in
quality--attributed to unskilled labor and overwork of machinery."
The explanation of this situation, of course, is largely to be found
in the fact that Japanese industries are women's industries--there
being seven times as large a proportion of women to men, the
Department of Commerce informs me, as in European and American
manufacturing. These women workers are mostly from the country. Their
purpose is only to work two or three years before getting married, and
thousands of them, called home to marry the husbands their parents
have selected, or else giving way physically under strain, quit work
before their contracts expire. "We have almost no factory laborers who
look on the work as a life business," was an expression often repeated
to me.
Not only in the mills, but in numerous other lines of work, have I
seen illustrations of the primitive stage of Japan's industrial
efficiency. As a concrete illustration I wish I might pass to each
reader the box of Kobe-made matches on the table before me (for
match-making of this sort is an important industry here, as well as
the sort conducted through matrimonial middlemen without waiting for
the aid or consent of either of the parties involved). I have never in
my life seen such a box of matches in America. Not in a hundred boxes
at home would you find so many splinters without heads, so many
defective matches. And in turning out the boxes themselves, I am told
that it takes five or six hands to equal the product of one skilled
foreign laborer. "It takes two or three Japanese servants to do the
work of one white servant" is the general verdict of housekeepers,
while it has also been brought to my {40} attention that in shops two
or three clerks are required to do the work of one at home. A Japanese
newspaper man (his paper is printed in English) tells me that linotype
compositors set only half as many ems per hour as in America. In
short, the general verdict as I have found it is indicated by what I
have written, and the most enthusiastic advocate of Japanese cheap
labor, the captain of the steamer on which I came from America, rather
spoiled his enthusiasm for getting his ship coaled at Nagasaki for
7-1/2 cents a ton, by acknowledging that if it rained he should have
to keep his ship waiting a day to get sufficient hands.
Moreover, while the Japanese factory workers are forced into longer
hours than labor anywhere else--eleven hours at night this week,
eleven hours in the day next week--I am convinced that the people as a
whole are more than ordinarily averse to steady, hard, uninterrupted
toil. "We have a streak of the Malay in us," as a Japanese professor
said to me, "and we like to idle now and then. The truth is our people
are not workers; they are artists, and artists must not be hurried."
Certainly in the hurried production of the factory the Japanese
artistic taste seems to break down almost beyond redemption, and the
people seem unable to carry their habits of neatness and carefulness
into the new environment of European machinery. "Take the Tokyo street
cars," said an ex-cabinet officer to me; "the wheels are seldom or
never cleaned or oiled, and are half eaten by rust." The railroads are
but poorly kept up; the telephones exhaust your patience; while in the
case of telegraphing, your exasperation is likely to lose itself in
amazed amusement. A few days ago, for example, I sent a telegram from
Osaka to Kobe, took my rickshaw across town, waited for a slow train
to start, and then reached Kobe and the street destination of my
message before it did.
In considering the failure of Japanese labor to bring forth a
satisfactory output, however, one thing more should be said, and that
is that we should not put the blame wholly on the {41} wage-earner.
Not a small proportion of the responsibility lies at the door of
inexpert managers. The family system of production has not only been
the rule for generations with that minority of the people not engaged
in farming, but it is still the dominant type of Japanese industry,
and it will take time even to provide opportunities for training a
sufficient corps of superintendents in the larger lines of production.
In further illustration of my argument that cheap labor is not proving
so abnormally profitable, I may question whether Japanese factories
have paid as good dividends, in proportion to prevailing rates of
interest on money, as factories in England and America. Baron
Shibusawa, the dean of Japanese financiers and one of the pioneers in
cotton manufacturing, is my authority for the statement that 12 per
cent, would be a rather high estimate of the average rate of dividend,
while figures furnished by the Department of Finance show that for ten
years the average rate of interest on loans has been 11.25 per cent.
The fact that Western ideas as to Japan's recent industrial advance
have been greatly exaggerated may also be demonstrated just here.
While the latest government figures show that in twelve years the
number of female factory operatives increased from 261,218 to 400,925
and male factory operatives from 173,614 to 248,251, it is plain that
a manufacturing population of 649,000 in a country of 50,000,000 souls
is small, and the actual progress has not been so great as the
relative figures would indicate. Moreover, many so-called "factories"
employ less than ten persons and would not be called factories at all
in England or America. The absence of iron deposits is a great
handicap, the one steel foundry being operated by the government at a
heavy loss, and in cotton manufacturing, where "cheap labor" is
supposed to be most advantageous, no very remarkable advance has been
made in the last decade. From 1899 to 1909 English manufacturers so
increased their trade that in the latter year they imported $222 worth
of raw {42} cotton for every $100 worth imported ten years before, while
Japan in 1909 imported only $177 worth for each $100 worth a decade
previous--though of course she made this cotton into higher grade
products.
III
It must also be remembered that the wages of labor in Japan are
steadily increasing and will continue to increase. More significant
than the fact of the low cost per day, to which I have already given
attention, is the fact that these wages represent an average increase
per trade of 40 per cent, above the wages eight years previous. The
new 1910 "Financial and Economic Annual" shows the rate of wages of
forty-six classes of labor for a period of eight years. For not one
line of labor is a decrease of wages shown, and for only two an
increase of less than 30 per cent.; sixteen show increases between 30
and 40 per cent., seventeen between 40 and 50 per cent., eight from 50
to 60 per cent., three from 60 to 70 per cent., while significantly
enough the greatest increase, 81 per cent., is for female servants, a
fact largely due to factory competition. In Osaka the British
vice-consul gave me the figures for the latest three-year period for
which figures have been published, indicating in these thirty-six
months a 30 per cent. gain in the wages of men in the factories and a
25 per cent, gain in the wages of women.
Of no small significance in any study of Japanese industry must also
be the fact that there are in Japan proper a full half million fewer
women than men (1910 figures: men, 25,639,581; women, 25,112,338)--a
condition the reverse of that obtaining in almost every other country.
Now the young Japanese are a very home-loving folk, and even if they
were not, almost all Shinto parents, realizing the paramount
importance of having descendants to worship their spirits, favor and
arrange early marriages for their sons. And what with this competition
for {43} wives, the undiminished demand for female servants, and a
half million fewer women than men to draw from, the outlook for any
great expansion of manufacturing based on woman labor is not very
bright. Moreover, with Mrs. Housekeeper increasing her frantic bids
for servants 81 per cent, in eight years, and still mourning that they
are not to be had, it is plain that the manufacturer has serious
competition from this quarter, to say nothing of the further fact that
the Japanese girls are for the first time becoming well educated and
are therefore likely to be in steadily increasing demand as
office-workers. Upon this general subject the head of one of Osaka's
leading factories said to me: "I am now employing 2500 women, but if I
wished to enlarge my mill at once and employ 5000, it would be
impossible for me to get the labor, though I might increase to this
figure by adding a few hundred each year for several years."
Unquestionably, too, shorter hours, less night work, weekly holidays,
and better sanitary conditions must be adopted by most manufacturers
if they are to continue to get labor. The Kobe _Chronicle_ quotes Mr.
Kudota, of the Sanitary Bureau, as saying that "most of the women
workers are compelled to leave the factories on account of their
constitutions being wrecked" after two or three years of night work,
consumption numbering its victims among them by the thousands. Either
the mills must give better food and lodging than they now provide or
else they must pay higher wages directly which will enable the
laborers to make better provision for themselves.
Yet another reason why wages must continue to advance is the steady
increase in cost of living, due partly to the higher standard
developed through education and contact with Western civilization, but
perhaps even more largely to the fearful burden of taxation under
which the people are staggering. A usual estimate of the tax rate is
30 per cent. of one's income, while Mr. Wakatsuki, late Japanese
Financial Commissioner to London, is quoted as authority for the
statement {44} that the people now pay in direct and indirect taxes,
35 per cent, of their incomes. And I doubt whether even this estimate
includes the increased amounts that citizens are forced to pay for
salt and tobacco as a result of the government monopoly in these
products, or the greatly increased prices of sugar resulting from the
government's paternalistic efforts to guarantee prosperity to sugar
manufacturers in Formosa.
IV
Higher still, and higher far than anything the nation has ever yet
known, must go the cost of living under the new tariff law. From a
British textile representative I learned the other day that a grade of
English woollens largely used by the Japanese for underwear will cost
over one third more under the new tariff, while the increased duty on
certain other lines of goods is indicated by the table herewith:
PERCENTAGE OF DUTY TO COST OF ARTICLE
Old Tariff New Tariff
Printed goods 3 22
White lawns 10 47
Shirtings 10 39
Cotton Italians 3 35
Poplins 8 19
Brocades 10 22
Neither a nation nor an individual can lift itself by its bootstraps.
The majority of the thoughtful people in the empire seem to me to
realize even now that through the new tariff Japanese industry, as a
whole, is likely to lose much more by lessened ability to compete in
foreign markets than it will gain by shackled competition in the home
markets. Farseeing old Count Okuma, once Premier, and one of the
empire's Elder Statesmen, seemed to realize this more fully than any
other man I have seen. "Within two or three years from the time the
new law goes into force," he declared, "I am {45} confident that its
injurious effects will be so apparent that the people will force its
repeal. With our heavy taxes the margin of wages left for comfort is
already small, and with the cost of living further increased by the
new tariff, wages must inevitably advance. This will increase the cost
of our manufactured products, now exported mostly to China, India, and
other countries requiring cheap or low-grade goods, and where we must
face the competition of the foremost industrial nations of the world.
As our cost of production increases, our competition with Europe will
become steadily more difficult and a decrease in our exports will
surely follow. It is folly for one small island to try to produce
everything it needs. The tariff on iron, for example, can only hamper
every new industry by increasing the cost of machinery, and must
especially hinder navigation and shipbuilding, in which we have made
such progress." Not a few of the country's foremost vernacular dailies
are as outspoken as Count Okuma on this point, and the Kobe
_Chronicle_ declares that, with diminished exports to Japan, "British
manufacturers will find compensation in the lessened ability of the
Japanese to compete in China; and Japan will find that she has raised
prices against herself and damaged her own efficiency."
That such will be the net result of Japan's new policy seems to me to
admit of no question. Unfortunately, certain special lines of British
and American manufacture may suffer, but, on the whole, what the white
man's trade loses in Japan will be recompensed for in China and India.
Even after Japan's adoption of the moderately protective tariff of
1899 her export of yarns to China--in the much discussed "market right
at her doors"--dropped from a product of 340,000 bales to a recent
average of 250,000 bales. From 1899 to 1908, according to the latest
published government figures, the number of employees in Japanese
cotton factories increased only 240--one third of 1 per cent.--or from
73,985 to 74,225, to be exact, while I have already alluded to the
figures showing the {46} comparative English and Japanese imports of
raw cotton from 1890 to 1909 as furnished me by Mr. Robert Young, of
Kobe, Japan in this period going from $30,000,000 to $54,000,000, or
77 per cent., while England's advance was from $135,000,000 to
$300,000,000, or 122 per cent. The increase in England's case, of
course, was largely, and in Japan's case almost wholly, due to the
increased price of the cotton itself, but the figures are none the
less useful for the purposes of comparison.
In the frequent attempts of the Japanese Government to stimulate
special industries by subsidies and special privileges there is, it
seems to me, equally as little danger to the trade of Europe and
America in general (though here, too, special industries may suffer
now and then), because Japan is in this way simply handicapping
herself for effective industrial growth. Just at this writing we have
an illustration in the case of the Formosan sugar subsidy which seems
to have developed into a veritable Frankenstein; or, to use a homelier
figure, the government seems to be in the position of the man who had
the bear by the tail, with equal danger in holding on or letting go.
Already, as a result of the system of subsidies, bounties and special
privileges, individual initiative has been discouraged, a dangerous
and corrupting alliance of government with business developed, public
morals debased (as was strikingly brought out in the Dai Nippon sugar
scandal), and the people, as Mr. Sasano, of the Foreign Department,
complains, now "rely on the help of the government on all occasions."
On the same point the Tokyo _Keizai_ declares that "the habit of
looking to the government for assistance in all and everything,
oblivious of independent enterprise . . . has now grown to the chronic
stage, and unless it is cured the health and vitality of the nation
will ultimately be sapped and undermined."
As for increasing complaints of "low commercial morality" brought
against Japanese merchants, that is not a matter of concern in this
discussion, except in so far as it may prove a form of Japanese
commercial suicide. But to one who holds {47} the view, as I do, that
the community of nations is enriched by every worthy industrial and
moral advance on the part of any nation, it is gratifying to find the
general alarm over the present undoubtedly serious conditions, and it
is to be hoped that the efforts of the authorities will result in an
early change to better methods.
V
Such is a brief review of the salient features of present-day Japanese
industry, and in no point do I find any material menace to the general
well-being of American and European trade. It is my opinion that the
Japanese will steadily develop industrial efficiency, but that in the
future no more than in the present will Japan menace European and
American industry (unless she is permitted to take unfair advantages
in Manchuria, Korea, etc.), for just in proportion as efficiency
increases, just in the same proportion, broadly speaking, wages and
standards of living will advance. The three--efficiency, wages, cost
of living--seem destined to go hand in hand, and this has certainly
been the experience thus far. And whatever loss we may suffer by
reason of Japan gradually supplanting us in certain cruder forms of
production should be abundantly compensated for in the better market
for our own higher-grade goods that we shall find among a people of
increasing wealth and steadily advancing standards of living.
In any fair contest for the world's trade there seems little reason to
fear any disastrous competition from Japan. Perhaps she has been
allowed to make the contest unfair in Manchuria or elsewhere, but
that, as Mr. Kipling would say, is another story.
Kobe, Japan.
{48}
VI
BUDDHISM, SHINTOISM, AND CHRISTIANITY IN JAPAN
One of the most fascinating places in all Japan is Kyoto, the old
capital of the empire, and one of its most picturesque and historic
cities. Without great factories such as Osaka boasts of, without the
political importance of Tokyo, and without shipping advantages such as
have made Kobe and Yokahoma famous, Kyoto is noted rather for
conserving the life of old Japan. Here are the family industries, the
handicrafts, and a hundred little arts in which the Land of the Rising
Sun excels.
Little themselves in stature, the people of Japan are best in dealing
with little things requiring daintiness, finish, and artistic taste.
Some one has said that their art is "great in little things and little
in great things," and unlike many epigrams, it is as true as it is
terse.