apan are very
similar to those that have prevailed in England. But this policy
requires high taxation, while successful competition in neutral markets
requires--or rather, is thought to require--starvation wages and long
hours for operatives. In the cotton industry of Osoka, for example, most
of the work is done by girls under fourteen, who work eleven hours a day
and got, in 1916, an average daily wage of 5d.[53] Labour organization
is in its infancy, and so is Socialism;[54] but both are certain to
spread if the number of industrial workers increases without a very
marked improvement in hours and wages. Of course the very rigidity of
the Japanese policy, which has given it its strength, makes it incapable
of adjusting itself to Socialism and Trade Unionism, which are
vigorously persecuted by the Government. And on the other hand Socialism
and Trade Unionism cannot accept Mikado-worship and the whole farrago of
myth upon which the Japanese State depends.[55] There is therefore a
likelihood, some twenty or thirty years hence--assuming a peaceful and
prosperous development in the meantime--of a very bitter class conflict
between the proletarians on the one side and the employers and
bureaucrats on the other. If this should happen to synchronize with
agrarian discontent, it would be impossible to foretell the issue.

The problems facing Japan are therefore very difficult. To provide for
the growing population it is necessary to develop industry; to develop
industry it is necessary to control Chinese raw materials; to control
Chinese raw materials it is necessary to go against the economic
interests of America and Europe; to do this successfully requires a
large army and navy, which in turn involve great poverty for
wage-earners. And expanding industry with poverty for wage-earners
means growing discontent, increase of Socialism, dissolution of filial
piety and Mikado-worship in the poorer classes, and therefore a
continually greater and greater menace to the whole foundation on which
the fabric of the State is built. From without, Japan is threatened with
the risk of war against America or of a revival of China. From within,
there will be, before long, the risk of proletarian revolution.

From all these dangers, there is only one escape, and that is a
diminution of the birth-rate. But such an idea is not merely abhorrent
to the militarists as diminishing the supply of cannon-fodder; it is
fundamentally opposed to Japanes