ppears somewhat to have hung fire, and
no general demand sprung up for the fitting of the telephone to
private houses. It required, as indeed was the case in this country,
some education of the people in regard to the paramount advantages of
always having this means of communication at hand. The process of
education in this respect was not prolonged. Before the telephone had
been many years in the country the demand for its installation in
houses and offices became so great that the Government had to obtain a
special grant of money in order to carry out the necessary work.
According to the latest returns there are somewhere about 350
telephone offices open to the public, while the approximate number of
messages transmitted is about 150,000,000. The time is not far distant
when, as I think will also be the case in this country, the telephone
will be deemed to be an indispensable adjunct of almost every house in
the towns of Japan.

In connection with the means of communication one or two remarks in
reference to tramways may not be out of place. These are entirely, or
almost entirely, electric, and have certainly, if we are to judge by
the patronage accorded to them, been very favourably received by the
Japanese people. According to the latest returns I have available
there were twenty-two tramway companies in Japan, which between them,
in the year 1904, carried the very respectable total of over
73,000,000 passengers. All of these lines save one are electric. The
first electric tramway, that in Kyoto, was opened in 1895, so that the
development of the country in this direction has proceeded rapidly.
The Tokio Electric Tramway Company pays a dividend of 11 per cent.,
and although this is a record which some of the other lines have not
yet attained, and may not possibly attain, nevertheless these matters
must not be altogether looked at from the point of view of dividends.
The shareholder very probably regards them from that standpoint, but I
suggest that the facilities given to a town may be as great or even
greater by a tramway paying 2, or 3, or 5 per cent. as by one paying
double that figure. Indeed, large dividends are often earned by
cutting down expenditure or abstaining from expenditure designed to
increase the facilities of passengers. There is every prospect of
electric tramways being extended to every town of any importance in
Japan, and I am confident they will greatly aid in the industrial
development of the