EGGS AND POULTRY [LXVII].  Even with the assistance of a tariff on Chinese eggs and of a Government poultry yard, which distributes birds and sittings at cost price, there were in 1919 14,105,085 fowls and 11,278,783 chickens.  There was an importation of 3-1/2 million “fresh” eggs.

MEAT CONSUMPTION [LXVIII].  The present meat consumption by Japanese is uncertain, for there were in 1920[A] 3,579 foreign residents and 22,104 visitors, and there is an exportation of ham and tinned and potted foods.  The number of animals slaughtered in 1918 was:  cattle and calves, 226,108; horses, 86,800; sheep and goats, 9,587; swine, 327,074.  Someone said to me that “the nutritious flesh of the horse should not be neglected, for the farmer is able to digest tough food.”

[Footnote A:  In 1921 as many as 24,000 foreigners landed in nine months.]

TUBERCULOSIS IN THE MILLS [LXIX].  When we remember early and mid-Victorian conditions in English mills and the conditions of the sweat shops in New York and other American cities (vide “Susan Lenox"), we shall be less inclined to take a harsh view of industrial Japan during a period of transition.  But it is to the interest of the woollen industry no less than that of its workers that the fact should be stated that a competent authority has alleged that 50 per cent. of the employees in the mills suffer from consumption and that many girls sleep ten in a room of only ten-mat size.  Improvements have been made lately under the influence of legislation and enlightened self-interest—­the president of the largest company is a man of foresight and public spirit—­but when I was in Japan, as I recorded in the New East at the time, girls of 13 and 14 were working 11-hour day and night shifts in some mills.

WOOLLEN FACTORIES [LXX].  In the Japanese woollen factory the cost of the hands is low individually, but expensive collectively.  An expert suggested that it takes half a dozen of the unskilled girls to do the work of an English mill-girl.  It is much the same with male labour.  “An English worker may be expected to produce work equal to the output of four Japanese hands.”  Labour for heads of departments is also difficult to get.  There are textile schools and probably a hundred men are graduated yearly.  But the men are not all fitted for the jobs which are vacant.  Therefore, one finds a man acting as an engineer who, because of his lack of technical experience, is unable to exercise sufficient control over the men in his charge.  A curiosity of the industry is the high wages which many men of this sort command.  They are really being paid better for inferior work than skilled men in England.  The capital of the factories in 1918 was 46-1/2 million yen with 32-3/4 million paid up.  Before the War the companies made 8 per cent, as against the 2-1/2 per cent, which contents the English manufacturer, who has often side lines to help his profits.  There was more than 100 million yen invested in the