The Birmingham age-herald., 1909-04-11
spinning Hills Are Paying From
 I7 to so Per Cent Dividends


1 for weaving In the near future much | of it woll go out in the shape of cotton 1 cloth for the markets of Japan, Corea, l Manchuria and China.
 $3,ooo,oo0 In Cotton Bales. l During my visit I went through 12 great cotton warehouses which are packed full of bales, from the ground to the roof, and the manager tells me that at certain times in the year he has as much as 8 000, 900 worth of raw cotton on hand The greater part of the cotton used comes from India, although much is from the United States. Kobe, which Is one of the chief ports of the empire, lands about $40,000,000 worth of cotton every year; and of this, s20, 900, coo worth comes from Indian se,00o,000 from China and over S1000O,000 from the United States. Our cotton is the best; but the Indian product is cheaper, and the two are mixed in the making of these yarns. The mana ger complained to me about the bad pack ing of our American bales, and showed me some of them side by side with bales from Bombay. The latter were beautiful ly put up and so wrapped that no cot ton could be lost. Our bales were broken and torn and the lint was falling out.
 With the Cotton Hands.
 As I walked through the mills I asked as 70 wages and hours of work. There are two shifts, one during the day and the other at night. The hours of actual work are ten; and there are rest hours at a. m., at noon and D. m. The rest times consume about two hours, and with them the working day is 12 hours long. This company does not work it's hands on Sundays, as is common with many of the industries of Japan. It believes in night work. Its managers tell me that al most all the cotton mills work both day and night, and that this custom is a great benefit to the spinning industry. As it is now, the demand for cotton yarns is so great that night work is a necessity, but in times of depression it is possible to stop the night work until the de- mand requires 1t again. By this double work the Japan mills are producing twice as much, per capital and machinery, as mills of other countries where day work only is used This fact may be one of the reasons for the big dividends which nearly all the companies are now pay ing.
 I asked as to wages of the mill hands and was told they are from 22 to so sen a day. This means from II to 30 cents of our money, or from a little more than 1 to cents for each working hour. At that they are high CT than in some other mills, the general wage of cotton spfnners throughout
 
 women 30 cents for men and cents for children.
 As I went through the mills I saw a great many children at work, and many of the child workers were under IA. I had photograph made of my self standing beside some little almond eyed tots who could not have been more than 10.
 According to the government re- ports there are now 325.00o hands in the textile factories, and of these al- most ,000 are females. There are also 26,000 girls and 2000 boys who are under IA years of age. This Is not a large proportion of children, and the number grows less from year to year. Girls Dormltorles.
 The Kanegafuchi company is about the most advanced of all in Japan as to it's meth ods of handling it's employees It has tenement houses which it rents out at low rates. and also dormitories for men and dormitories for women. visited one of the latter buildings. It was a two-storied structure surround ing a beautiful garden. Its.walls were of frame work covered with paper, with outer walls of pine wood It had ac- commodations for 800 girls sleeping in Japanese fashion on the floor, with sew eral girls in each room. As the night shift was sleeping, I was not able to look at many of the rooms but the few I saw were carpeted with the i whitest of mats and warmed by : hibachs or Japanese fire boxes Out side this. they had practically no other furniture. The bedding consisted of