FACTORY GIRLS AND WOMEN
AS already stated, many girls prefer factory work to that of domestic service, either in private families or in hotels. From ancient times there have been small industrial enterprises, employing each a few hands in various lines of work, such as the reeling and spinning of silk and cotton thread and the weaving of cloth; but since the war with China there have arisen enormous factories, after the fashion of Western lands, which have introduced great changes in the industrial situation and in the condition of the working classes.
The government report for 1912 shows that there were 863,447 individuals employed in 15,119 factories having ten or more hands each. Of these, 348,230 were men and 515,217 were girls and women. In addition it reports 427,636 weaving houses, having 733,039 looms and employing 697,698 operators. No statement is made as to the proportion of the sexes. Remembering that the government statistics take no account of industrial enterprises employing less than ten hands, it is probably safe to estimate the number of women employed in exclusively non-domestic occupations at not less than a million.
We are not concerned however with the industries themselves, but rather with the conditions under which the operatives work and the effect of the work on their lives and characters. To begin with the more pleasant side of the question, there are factories which come well up toward the ideal. The terms of employment, the wages paid, the provisions for ill health, for accident, for long service and old age; the rooms for sleeping, eating, and recreation; the bathing establishments; the education given to those who need it; the public lectures and religious and ethical instruction given at fixed times in the public halls of the factories, Buddhist and Christian teachers being impartially invited; the provisions for marriage of employees and arrangements that each couple have a separate suite of rooms, and that the infants are cared for while the mother is in the mill; these and other provisions show that the best in Japan is up to a high level of excellence. Such is the policy of the Kanegafuchi Company, which owns a score of mills in different parts of Japan, and whose success moreover is so great that it is now buying up less successful competitors.
For several years this company has set aside annually 20,000 yen ($10,000) for its relief and pension fund for operatives. In June, 1913, in addition to its regular appropriation, it voted an extra $50,000 for a "welfare promotion fund."
The president of the Fuji Cotton Spinning Company was given in 1913 a retiring grant of $50,000, inasmuch as the great success of this company had been due to his skill and energy. He however presented the entire amount to the "employers' relief fund, and it was decided to make this gift the nucleus of a permanent endowment fund."
AT WORK IN A SILK FACTORY
AT WORK IN A SILK FACTORY
There is a silk factory in Ayabe, the Gunze Seishi Kwaisha, whose record is the most wonderful of all. It is managed by a Christian, who runs it entirely with a view to the benefit of the workers and the district. No girls of that district go elsewhere for work. Once enrolled as members of the working force they are regularly instructed, both in general education and in their particular duties; they earn good wages, keep good health, receive Christian instruction, have their regular rest days, remain the full number of years, help support the family and earn enough besides to set themselves up in married life, and are now beginning to send their daughters to the same factory. This Christian factory is Christianizing the district. The rising moral and religious life is transforming even the agricultural and other interests of the region. So high is the grade of silk thread produced, and so uniform and reliable is the quality, that it alone of all the factories in Japan is able to export its product direct to the purchasing firm in the United States, which buys the entire output at an annual cost of about $500,000, and without intermediate inspection at Yokohama. Here we have a splendid illustration of the way in which Christian character is solving the problem arising from the low moral and economic ideals of the masses of Japan's working classes. As a rule the modern industrial worker does not put moral character into his work; and a wide complaint of Occidental importers of Japanese products is that goods are not made according to contract or sample. This is one of the greatest obstacles to the continuous prosperity of any Japanese industry; for as soon as a large demand has arisen in foreign lands for any given article, its quality, as a rule, has rapidly deteriorated. It is this unreliability of Japanese workmen that makes so difficult direct exportation to foreign lands without the supervision of Occidental middlemen. The Christian Gunze Seishi Kwaisha is one of the splendid exceptions which shows what Japanese workmen and manufacturers can do, when controlled by high ideals and motives.
Unfortunately however not all factories and their managers have the same spirit, aim, or skill. Many factories are the exact opposite in every respect to those owned by the Kanegafuchi and Gunze Seishi companies. My personal attention was first called to the heartrending condition of servitude imposed on vast numbers of girls by reading, a score of years ago, of a fire in the dormitory of an Osaka factory. The dormitory was in a closed compound, whose doors and gates were carefully locked to keep the girls from running away. The result was the death, if I remember correctly, of every inmate, of whom there were several score.
My personal knowledge in regard to the conditions of life and work of factory operatives was secured in Matsuyama, Shikoku, a small inland city of some forty thousand inhabitants, having but a single cotton thread spinning factory. It had no dormitories of its own, but sent its operatives to certain specified boarding-houses in the town. Through a Mr. Omoto, who was at that time working in the factory, and whose life story is given in the final chapter, I became intimately acquainted with the conditions prevailing in Matsuyama. 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. Large numbers ranged from seven to twelve years old, the majority, however, being from fifteen to twenty. They worked in two shifts of twelve hours each, but as they were required to clean up daily they did not get out till six-thirty or seven, morning and night. The only holidays for these poor little workers came two or three times a month, when the shifts changed; but even then there was special cleaning, and the girls who had worked all night were kept till nine and even ten in the morning. He was also deeply impressed with their wretched condition and immoral life. The majority of them could neither read nor write; their popular songs were indecent, and they were crowded together in disease-spreading and vermin-breeding, immoral boarding-houses, where they were deliberately tempted. Some of the landlords were also brothel keepers.
Mr. Omoto, having opportunity as official "visitor" to become accurately acquainted with their life, told me in detail the conditions which have been briefly summarized above. The boarding-houses were only for girls from out of town. They had to be "recognized" by the factory, and the girls had to live in the houses to which they were assigned. Of course the purpose of these houses was to make money. The financial, hygienic, intellectual, and moral interests of the girls were wholly ignored. They were crowded into ill-ventilated, sunless rooms, the two shifts occupying the same rooms alternately. Personal extravagance was purposely stimulated, for girls in debt to the keepers were compelled to stay to work off their debts. Drinking and immoral carousings were their only recreation. As might be expected, sickness was common and epidemics frequent. Many girls returned to their homes after a few months in the "city" ruined not only in health but in character,—premature mothers of illegitimate children.
The conditions of the factory girls in Matsuyama were not unique. Miss J. M. Holland, a Church of England missionary in Osaka, recently told me some of her observations and experiences. She has devoted the larger part of her time for fifteen years to work among factory girls, and on the whole can report improvement. When she began her visits to the factories, the conditions were often appalling. It was not uncommon for girls working on the night shift to be kept, on one pretext or another, till noon the next day, making eighteen hours of work. The conditions of work and life were such that the girls frequently ran away, to prevent which the dormitories were virtually prisons within the factory compounds. The girls were not allowed to go out on the streets, were given no opportunity for recreation, and of course no education. They were underfed, overworked, and punished in various ways by their overseers, cuffed and sometimes whipped, for disobedience or blunders. The daily papers of those days had frequent items reporting oppression and ill treatment; to be deprived of wages as punishment was a common experience; police occasionally discovered girls working in cellars and vaults as punishment for misdeeds; girls sometimes escaped in their night clothes, and on a few occasions the girls rebelled and did personal violence to the overseers.
But, as already stated, the general conditions are now much better, for it was gradually found that such ill-treated labor was not profitable. "Most of the superintendents in Osaka are now splendid men, who on the whole take good care of the girls and wish to treat them honorably." The crying evils of the past have been largely done away. Rest, recreation, education, wages, and health are receiving careful consideration at all the leading factories. Still, no true parent would send a daughter to work in such a place, unless under the stress of dire poverty. There are still many small children under ten years of age, whose parents make false statements in regard to their ages. The work is from six in the morning to six in the evening. This means rising at four-thirty every morning for work on the day shift. Some factories have abolished the night shift. Fifteen minutes are allowed for rest in the middle of the forenoon, thirty minutes for lunch, and fifteen minutes again in the afternoon, giving thus eleven hours of steady work per day and the same per night. On pay days the girls, after standing eleven hours, have to stand in file from one to three hours more, according to their luck, and Miss Holland says that such long hours of standing result in serious organic difficulties. One half of the girls fail to work out their three years' contract, returning to their homes before time for marriage, seriously injured, if not completely ruined, physically. So long as this system continues, she adds, skilled labor is impossible. While some factories take great care that girls are carefully guarded from evil, others exercise no control whatever over their goings and doings. One factory she named as allowing its girls to be out on the streets till two o'clock in the morning. It insists on only two and a half hours of sleep! The difficulties connected with private boarding-houses for factory girls have proved so great that most of them have been closed.
One of the tragic aspects of factory life in Japan is the large number of what would seem to us avoidable accidents, due to the fact that the girls know nothing whatever about machinery. Large factories accordingly keep surgeons on hand to care for the wounded. Miss Holland says that in one Osaka factory where there are a thousand operatives, the kind-hearted surgeon told her they had an average of fifty accidents daily which needed his attention. The little children especially suffer, often losing fingers. Not long since five fingers were clipped off in a single day! Miss Holland added that, improved though the conditions are, factory life for children is a "murder of the innocents." As a rule the food provided in factory dormitories is still inadequate. When asked whether corporal punishment is still inflicted, she expressed a doubt, having heard of none for a long time.
In her conversation Miss Holland expressly limited her report to the factories she knows in Osaka. The question arises whether the conditions there may not be peculiar. May not factory conditions in Yokohama and Tokyo, where government inspection and control would theoretically be most complete, be better than elsewhere? The facts do not seem to justify such a surmise. The Kanegafuchi Company and some others have good factories everywhere, but there would seem also to be bad ones everywhere.
A Japanese book on Industrial Education has recently been published by a Mr. R. Uno, who, for fifteen years, has been a devoted student of Japan's industrial problems. A summary of the statistics there given appeared in May, 1914, in the Tokyo Advertiser, from which I cull the following facts and figures.
In the cotton thread and spinning factories of Japan, there are 81 girls to 19 men. Out of 1,000 girls, 386 are over 20 years of age, 317 are from 17 to 20, 191 are from 15 to 16, 73 are from 12 to 14, while 7 girls out of a thousand are under 12 years of age. The vast majority of factory girls live in the factory dormitories, which are of enormous size. In the region of Osaka there are more than 30,000 girls working in 30 factories; in these same factories there are less than 7,000 men. Three of these factories employ over 3,000 girls each, while three more employ 2,000 and upward. These girls are herded together in enormous dormitories, disastrous both to health and morals. Statistics covering a number of years show that out of every 1,000 girls, 270 work less than six months at the same place; 200 less than one year, 179 less than two years; 121 less than three years; 141 less than five years, and only 89 pass the five-year period. The usual reason for this extraordinary fluctuation of workers is that the girls break down in health. Government statistics declare that out of every 100 girls to enter upon factory work 23 die within one year of their return to their homes, and of these 50 per cent. die of tuberculosis. But it is also asserted that 60 per cent. of the girls who leave home for factory work never return. Of the criminal girls arrested in Osaka for a certain period, 49 per cent. had been factory hands. As to the education of factory girls it is stated that, out of 1,000, the number that had completed the required number of years of schooling (six) was 450, while 385 were entirely without education. Out of 1,000 girls, 453 were orphans. Of 1,000 girls, 611 came from farmers' homes, 166 from those of fishermen, and 55 from merchant homes, the remaining 168 being scattering. Factory girls earn and can save more than almost any other class. The average earnings per month are stated to be $4.67. The girl pays $1.20 per month for food, which is less than the actual cost, the factory providing the balance, namely, $1.30. The average girl sends home fifty cents per month. Three out of ten girls spend the balance entirely on clothes, five out of ten on cakes and theaters, while two out of ten save it. Such are some of the statements made by Mr. Uno in his enlightening book.
In the September, 1910, number of the Shin Koron, a monthly magazine published in Tokyo, is an article by Professor Kuwada (of the Tokyo Imperial University) entitled "The Pitiful Environment of Factory Girls." He gives a detailed statement of the conditions of factory workers, in which he estimates the number of female laborers in factories containing ten or more hands at 700,000, of whom ten per cent. are under fourteen years of age. In tobacco factories ten per cent., in match factories twenty per cent, and in glass factories thirty per cent. of the girls are under ten years of age. He vigorously condemns the situation as threatening the future of the working class, whose prospective mothers are thus being destroyed. The efforts of the government during recent years to enact factory laws have been successfully thwarted thus far, says Professor Kuwada, by shortsighted, selfish capitalists. The girls are brought in from their country homes by false promises. They are told of the beautiful sights to be seen, theaters to be visited, the regular Sunday rest, and even of the splendid care and education they will receive from the factory. There is also stealing of expert workers from one factory by the artful stratagems of another. There are factories which resort to devices for defrauding helpless operatives. In one town where there are many factories, it is customary to work overtime by setting back the hands of the clock. To conceal this from the operatives, no factory blows its whistles! Some factories do not give time for the girls to rest even while they eat, but require them to work with the right hand while they eat with the left. Night work in which both male and female operatives are engaged together is most demoralizing. Punishment of various kinds is administered. In addition to fines, in some places the girls are imprisoned in dark rooms, rations are reduced, their arms are bound and the lash applied freely, and in extreme cases they are stripped to the waist and marched through the factory among young men and girls, bearing a red flag tied to the back! Superintendents are invariably men.
So appalling was the statement made by Professor Kuwada that I could scarcely believe him in all the details, particularly in regard to the use of the lash and the stripping to the waist. I accordingly wrote both to him and to Professor Abe of Waseda University, who has made special study of the social problems and conditions of industry. Professor Kuwada, I learned, has been a careful student of social and industrial conditions for nearly twenty years, and is one of the leaders in the Society for the Study of Social Politics, composed of one hundred and fifty university professors and high government officials. This society was organized to aid the government in its efforts to secure social and industrial reforms. In reply to my inquiries Professor Kuwada says that most of the facts given concerning silk factories he has himself observed. Those concerning cotton spinning factories he has derived from reliable sources, chiefly from the officers of the Department of Agriculture and Commerce, who are especially engaged in making investigations in regard to industrial conditions. Much of the testimony rests on the statements of the girls themselves. Some of the facts come from local police and some from the published reports of the Department of Agriculture and Commerce. "The article in the Shin Koron may therefore be regarded as semi-official," says Professor Abe. Since the appearance of the article referred to above, no reply has been made to it by factory owners or managers. As to the stripping of a girl to the waist and marching her through the factory filled with operatives, male and female, Professor Kuwada was told this by the girl herself. Under such circumstances, it is difficult to doubt the testimony. Nor is it probable that the cases cited are absolutely unique, although I think it highly probable that such extreme indignities and punishments are rare,—they are so out of keeping with the whole trend of Japanese civilization and culture. Mrs. Binford, a missionary in Mito, assures me, however, that altering the hands of the clock is a practise known to her. Testimony is widespread that girls are secured for factories by all kinds of false statements.
In view of the frightful conditions of industrial labor thus indicated by Mr. Uno and Professor Kuwada, it is amazing that the Diet has refused on several successive occasions to enact suitable laws. The government began to realize in 1898 the need for legislation on these matters. A bill which was drafted and presented in 1902 was rejected, as were also three subsequent bills. The chief feature of the bill presented during the winter of 1910-11 was the provision that no factory may employ girls under twelve, and that girls of any age and youth under sixteen may not be kept at work for more than twelve hours per day, nor be made to do night work without "special reason." While some provisions of this bill were enacted and others amended, those considered most important by social reformers and by the government were virtually rejected. The bill was indeed passed, but with the added provision that the important clauses, relative to ages and night work, be inoperative for a period of fifteen years (!) in order to give time to the factories involved to adjust themselves to the new conditions. Since that time no further factory legislation has been enacted. Is it not astounding that in a land on the whole so progressive as Japan the difficulty of securing reform should be found in the Diet? The administration at this point is ahead of the representatives of the people, as it is indeed in many other respects. The fact is, as Professor Kuwada points out, that the "representatives" in both the lower and upper houses represent the financial interests of capitalists, rather than the human interests of the masses.
But the reader, in his indignation over the situation of factory workers in Japan, should remember that Japan is no exceptional sinner among the nations. Christian England and America have had conditions equally bad, and possibly worse. Dr. Washington Gladden, in his article on "The Reason for the Unions," in the New York Outlook for March, 1911, makes the following statements in regard to the condition of labor in England in the early part of the nineteenth century. Men and women stood daily at their tasks, from twelve to fourteen and fifteen hours; a working day of sixteen hours was not an unheard-of thing. Government reports of this period show that children of five and six years of age were frequently employed in factories. "Nor was this unmeasured abuse of child labor confined to the cotton, silk, and wool industries.... The report of 1842 is crammed with statements as to the fearful overwork of girls and boys in iron and coal mines, which doubtless had been going on from the end of the eighteenth century;... Children could get about where horses and mules could not. Little girls were forced to carry heavy buckets of coal up high ladders, and little girls and boys instead of animals dragged the coal bunkers. Women were constantly employed underground at the filthiest tasks. Through all this period the wages gravitated downward and family income was steadily lowered, while the cost of food increased. The homes of the workers were ruined. In a certain congested district there lived 26,830 persons in 5,366 families, three fourths of which possessed but one room each. The rooms were without furniture, without everything; two married couples often shared the same room. In some cases there was not even a heap of straw on which to sleep. In one cellar the pastor found two families and a donkey; two of the children had died and the third was dying." And these conditions existed, not in days of industrial depression, but in flush times; business was booming and wealth accumulating in the hands of factory owners and employers.
Many of the conditions of industrial workers even in the United States to-day are heartrending in the extreme. Who could read of the strike of the shirt-waist makers of New York in the winter of 1909-10 without deep indignation over the conditions under which those brave girls worked, and against which they rebelled? The National Committee on Child Labor reported in the spring of 1911 that there were over 60,000 children in the factories of the United States, mostly in the South. Before condemning Japan unduly, Occidentals should remember that their own record is none too bright.
If comparison is to be made however between Japan and the West, it may be made along other lines. The West fell into its industrial difficulties with no example from which to learn. But this is not true of Japan. She can easily learn the lesson of a century of Western experience; but she seems slow to do it. Then again in Japan it is the government that is feebly leading, and the official popular representatives who are both blind and resisting, whereas in the West the great movements for industrial reform are movements of the people themselves, backed up and oftentimes led by enlightened humanitarian and Christian popular opinion. In the West, the churches are fairly in line with forward social movements, whereas in Japan, Shintoism, Confucianism, and even Buddhism are apparently wholly indifferent to the economic and even ethical condition of the nation's toilers. Furthermore, we are seeing to-day in Japan the strange phenomenon of one section of the government seeking to ameliorate social and economic conditions, and at the same time another, seemingly mortally afraid of allowing the people either to discuss these matters or to attempt reform movements themselves. Labor unions are strictly forbidden, and any person advocating socialism is under strict police surveillance. Strikes are illegal and their promoters are liable to criminal punishment. Anomalous as it may be, the government seems to be seeking to destroy that enlightened popular opinion on which it must rely for the efficient enforcement of its own plans for social betterment of the working classes.
I have dwelt at considerable length on the conditions of factory workers, for later on I shall describe a sociological experiment among this class.