act with Western civilization, but
perhaps even more largely to the fearful burden of taxation under
which the people are staggering. A usual estimate of the tax rate is
30 per cent. of one's income, while Mr. Wakatsuki, late Japanese
Financial Commissioner to London, is quoted as authority for the
statement {44} that the people now pay in direct and indirect taxes,
35 per cent, of their incomes. And I doubt whether even this estimate
includes the increased amounts that citizens are forced to pay for
salt and tobacco as a result of the government monopoly in these
products, or the greatly increased prices of sugar resulting from the
government's paternalistic efforts to guarantee prosperity to sugar
manufacturers in Formosa.

IV

Higher still, and higher far than anything the nation has ever yet
known, must go the cost of living under the new tariff law. From a
British textile representative I learned the other day that a grade of
English woollens largely used by the Japanese for underwear will cost
over one third more under the new tariff, while the increased duty on
certain other lines of goods is indicated by the table herewith:

PERCENTAGE OF DUTY TO COST OF ARTICLE

Old Tariff New Tariff

Printed goods 3 22

White lawns 10 47

Shirtings 10 39

Cotton Italians 3 35

Poplins 8 19

Brocades 10 22

Neither a nation nor an individual can lift itself by its bootstraps.
The majority of the thoughtful people in the empire seem to me to
realize even now that through the new tariff Japanese industry, as a
whole, is likely to lose much more by lessened ability to compete in
foreign markets than it will gain by shackled competition in the home
markets. Farseeing old Count Okuma, once Premier, and one of the
empire's Elder Statesmen, seemed to realize this more fully than any
other man I have seen. "Within two or three years from the time the
new law goes into force," he declared, "I am {45} confident that its
injurious effects will be so apparent that the people will force its
repeal. With our heavy taxes the margin of wages left for comfort is
already small, and with the cost of living further increased by the
new tariff, wages must inevitably advance. This will increase the cost
of our manufactured products, now exported mostly to China, India, and
other countries requiring cheap or low-gr