together in crowded compounds little better than the workhouses
for American criminals!

Or consider the rice farmers who wade through mud knee-deep to plant
the rice by hand, cultivate it with primitive tools, and harvest it
with sickles. And after all this, they must often sell the rice they
grow, and themselves buy cheaper millet or poorer rice for their own
food. The situation has probably improved somewhat since Col. Charles
Denby published his book five years ago, but in its general outlines
the plight of the typical Chinese farmer as described by him then is
true to-day:

"The average wage of an able-bodied young man is $12 per annum, with
food and lodging, straw shoes, and free shaving--an important item in
a country where heads must be shaved three or four times a month.
His clothing costs about $4 per annum. In ten years he may buy one
third of an acre of land ($150 per acre) and necessary implements.
In ten years more he may {178} double his holdings and become
part-owner in a water buffalo. In six years more he can procure a
wife and live comfortably on his estate. Thus in twenty-six years he
has gained a competence."

So much by way of a faint picture of existing industrial conditions in
the Orient. Let us now see what there is for us to learn from these
facts.

First of all, we may inquire why such conditions obtain. Why is it
that the Oriental gets such low wages, and has such low earning power?
"An overcrowded population," somebody answers, "in China, for example,
four hundred million people--one fourth the human race--crowded within
the limits of one empire. This is the cause."

I don't believe it.

There is a limit no doubt beyond which increase of population, even
with the most highly developed system of industry, might lead to such
a result, but I do not believe that this limit has been reached even
in China. The people in England live a great deal better to-day than
they did when England had only one tenth its present population. The
average man in your county has more conveniences, comforts, and a
better income than he had in your grandfather's day when the
population was not nearly so dense. The United States with a
population of ninety odd million pays its laborers vastly better than
it did when its population was only thirty million.

The truth is that every man should be able to earn a little more than
he consumes; there should be a margin, an excess which should
co