to fourteen hours and, considering these long hours, they
show great industry and conscientiousness.

In some places women were employed at the hardest work, such as coaling
ships by hand and digging and carrying earth from canals and ditches.

Scarcely less impressive than the tireless industry of the people is the
enormous number of children that may be seen both in city and country.
It was impossible to get statistics of births, but any American
traveling through Japan must be struck with the fact that this is a land
not threatened by race suicide.

Women who looked far beyond the time of motherhood were suckling
infants, while all the young women seemed well provided with children.
Girls of five or six were playing games with sleeping infants strapped
to their backs, and even boys were impressed into this nursery work. The
younger children are clothed only in kimonos, so that the passer-by
witnesses many strange sights of naked Japanese cherubs.

In all quarters of Tokio the children were as numerous as in tenement
streets of American cities on a Sunday afternoon, and in small country
towns the number of children seemed even greater than in the big cities.

Another feature of Japanese life that made a profound impression on me
was the pilgrimage of school children to the various sacred shrines
throughout the empire. At Nikko and at Nara, two of the great seats of
Buddhist and Shinto shrines, these child pilgrims were conspicuous. They
were seen in bands of fifty or seventy-five, attended by tutors. The
boys were dressed in blue or black jackets, white or blue trousers and
white leggings. Each carried his few belongings in a small box or a
handkerchief and each had an umbrella to protect him from the frequent
showers.

The girls had dark red merino skirts, with kimono waists of some dark
stuff. Many were without stockings, but all wore straw sandals or those
with wooden sole and heavy wooden clogs. School children are admitted to
temples and shrines at half rates and in every place the guides pay
special attention to these young visitors.

Pilgrimages of soldiers and others are also very common. Whenever a
party of one hundred is formed it receives the benefit of the half-rate
admission. No observant tourist can fail to see that in the pilgrimages
of these school children and these soldiers the authorities of new Japan
find the best means of stimulating patriotism. Church and State are so
closely welded that t