Page:A wandering student in the Far East vol.1 - Zetland.djvu/42

There is another, a powerful—perhaps a sinister—influence eating slowly but surely into the old communal life of the people,—the influence of modern industrial requirement. Already thousands of women and children are toiling wearily in factory and workshop, attending mechanically to the great steam-driven spindles and looms which are slowly but inexorably crushing the life out of the old family hand–machines on which were made the exquisite fabrics embodying the artistic soul of Japan. Unguarded and uncared for by a kindly legislation, their lot is far from being an enviable one. No factory acts grace the statute-book of Japan. "We have our duty before us," say the manufacturers, "to establish ourselves firmly upon the world's markets. Let us get our hold of them before we are tied and handicapped by Government interference." Such was the fervent aspiration which I heard breathed by more than one manufacturer,—an aspiration which would appear to have every chance of being fulfilled, since only so lately as August 1906 the Japanese Government refused an invitation to send