to the same families to do the same work
ten years ago.

In other ways, too, women are learning to fill new places in the world.
The telephone, which now connects towns and cities and villages in
Japan, employs girls in large numbers. In the printing-offices we find
women at work, not as compositors, but as compositors' assistants,
darting from case to case about the room and selecting for the
compositor the ideographs that he needs in his work. Inasmuch as a small
printing-office cannot get along with less than four thousand
characters, and as larger ones may have several times that number, the
need of quick-witted and quick-footed assistants to each compositor may
be easily recognized. As the schools turn out each year more girls
fitted by education to do this kind of work, and as the number of
newspapers and other printed matter is continually on the increase, the
demand for and supply of this special variety of labor are likely to
increase proportionately for some time to come.

A few women are now making their way as reporters on the daily papers,
a few more are engaged in literary work. One of the best of modern
Japanese novelists was a woman, but she died several years ago at so
early an age that her work was a promise rather than a fulfillment.
Artists, too, there are, who are making names for themselves, as well as
a living, in a country where art is so common that success in that line
means hard work and special talent. A few young women support themselves
by stenography, a few more as clerks and secretaries in business
offices. Until a writing-machine has been invented that will write four
thousand characters, there will not be much demand for typewriter girls
in Japan outside of the treaty ports, where a few are now employed. The
Japanese government has found, as Uncle Sam discovered some time ago,
that for the counting of paper money women's fingers are more deft than
those of men, and it consequently gives employment to a few women in
that work. One railroad has recently begun to employ women as
ticket-sellers, and three medical schools have already graduated some
women physicians, though it is still doubtful whether there is any
great opening for them in the country. These are some of the ways in
which women now find themselves able to gain a little more independence
of life. The whole matter is so new that no statistics are available
that will show the exact extent of the demand for labor in these
dir