, 1888-10-25
OF JAPAN.
Great Poverty Among the Lower Glasses
Houses and Observation-Disclosures,

Great Poverty Among the Lower Glasses.
Houses and MISUNDERSTANDING.
Consul Jernigan, of Osaka, reports as
follows to the department of state:
1t may be said, emphatically, that there
is great poverty among the lower classes
in Japan, the inheritance of long centuries
of superstition and despotism. With a
population of $1,000, 900, living on an area
of $50, 600 square miles, two-thirds of
which are mountains and hills, unsuited
for agricultural purposes, labor will con-
tinue, for a long time, to be cheap and
abundant. A good laborer can be hired
for Is to 25 cents per day, and he will
work from 6 n. m to 8 p. m. and board
himself. The laborer don't wear many
clothes, and often appears in-a-suit-that
would excite the envy of the stanchest
dude.
A laborer's house is mostly one story
and contains not more than two or three
rooms, in addition to a small room each
for cooking and bathing purposes. The
floor of the rooms is about one foot from
the ground and covered with soft, thick
straw mats which are kept very clean, for
the japanese always take off their san
dals or clogs when entering the house.
Furniture is not used at all in d real
Japanese house, except a small table
about n foot high and fifteen inches
square, which is only called into requisi-
ton at meal time, the family sitting on
the mats like tailors on their benches.
The bedding consists of soft, thick cotton
quilts spread on the mats. A laborer's
house, including everything connected
with it, will not cost more n a 800 in
gold.
In such houses ventilation and warmth
seem never to be considered, for the
proper partitions Int slides are only pro-
tected in cold and stormy weather by
strong wooden shutters, fitting badly, and
through which the wind and rain find lit
tie difficulty in entering. And there are
neither stoves nor CRATES in such houses,
for the materials employed in building are
so inflammable that it would be danger
GUS to use them. In the place of stoves
and CRATES there are braziers filed with
heated charcoal, and at night the brazier,
when the weather is cold, is covered with
q kind of earthenware and placed under
the quilt, the latter being protected from
the fire and heat by a wooden grating.
Though labor is cheap in Japan, and its
reward discouraging: though the laborer
is unfamiliar with the comforts which
surround the home of the workingman in
my own country, l believe that the
Japanese laborer is the happiest and best
contented being l ever saw. If his pan
and cup are filed with rice and tea he ap-
pears the very embodiment of happiness,
and over all the ills of life victorious"
The agricultural implements, as well as
machinery of almost every description in
use by the Japanese, are of the most
primitive origin, but attention is now be
ginning to be directed to the advantages
of modern inventions, though labor is still
so cheap and abundant in Japan that such
inventions have not yet been received with
remuneration in the markets, and there is
not any sufficient demand to stimulate
shipments of machinery and agricultural
implements to this country, except to fill
special contracts.-Scientiic American.