y
conversions. As the national credit strengthens, the interest on
borrowings may be correspondingly decreased. Consequently, there may be
frequent funding operations and new issues, until seven and six per
cent. bonds have given place to obligations bearing five per cent.
interest or less. To provide funds for early railway building,
considerable capital was borrowed at as high a rate as ten per cent.
When these obligations expire all necessary money can be found in the
country at less than half the original rate. Japan is fortunate in
having many sound financiers to invite to her official councils, and it
is helpful to the country that Tokyo and Yokohama bankers are competent
and progressive. These men pronounce Japan's present financial position
sound, and claim that the country can easily carry the existing debt.

In natural resources Japan is not well to do, it must be frankly said.
Examine the country in as friendly a spirit as one may, little is
developed to support any statement that the country may become
prosperous from the products of her own soil. In truth Japan is nearly
as unproductive as Greece and Norway, for only sixteen per cent. of her
soil is arable. The mountain ranges and peaks and terraced hills that
make the country scenically attractive to the tourist come near to
prohibiting agriculture. The lowlands, separating seacoast from the
foothills, and the valleys generally, are given over to rice culture,
and these contribute largely towards sustaining the people. Where
valleys are narrow, and on hillside patches, cultivation is carried on
wholly by hand. In recent years phosphates and artificial fertilizers
have been encouraged by the government, and with the educational work
now in hand science may give an increase of crops from the circumscribed
tillable area. The country's forests cannot be sacrificed, and grazing
lands for flocks and herds scarcely exist.

A recent magazine writer, holding a doleful view of Japan's agricultural
condition, wholly overlooked the silk and tea crops in his search for
native products, an error obviously fallen into through the fact that
these are not raised on what governmental reports call "tillable
ground,"--meaning that they are produced outside the sixteen per cent.
arable area. Silk is Japan's important salable crop, two thirds of which
is exported in its raw state. In the past few years the silk exports
have averaged $55,000,000. Japan grows the tea consumed in