married? Again relying on government statistics for the same year, we learn that only 199 girls under fifteen had been married, whereas 193,978 had married under twenty years of age. In view of the fact that 709,021 marriages took place between twenty and twenty-five years of age, it is altogether probable that, of those married under twenty, a large majority were married in their nineteenth year. Remembering that many do not marry until the twenty-third or twenty-fourth year, we can confidently assert that there are over 4,000,000 unmarried girls and young women between the ages of ten and twenty-five; and, as 58 per cent. belong to the farming class, we have in the vicinity of 3,000,000 girls who belong to families of such economic state that they, no less than the boys, must contrive in some way to earn a share at least of their own living. Girls of fifteen and upwards in farmers' families help their fathers in the lighter forms of agriculture, planting the rice, as we have seen, and reaping and threshing the crops. But the small acreage to each family barely provides work enough for the man, much less for the half-grown boys and girls, hence the need of finding something besides the agricultural work for the growing family. The younger children (under fifteen) are pressed into lighter farming, and such household duties as are within their strength and ability, as cooking and caring for the still younger children; while the older children and the mother help the father, or take up some domestic industry, such as the rearing of silkworms, reeling of silk, spinning of thread, and weaving of silk and cotton fabrics, or similar work which can be easily and profitably done in the house in spare hours. Hence has come the widespread practise of household industries, by which the female members supplement the family income. There were, in 1907, 1,628,000 members of farming families who were earning a part of their living in this way. This condition has prevailed for many generations, and is the secret of the wonderful development of the arts and home industries in Japan.

A FAMILY AT WORK IN A RICE-FIELD
TRANSPLANTING YOUNG RICE PLANTS

From of old Japan's industrial system, like that of other lands, has been domestic—carried on in the house. There have been families and gilds which have made their entire livelihood by these manual industries. There have also been hundreds of thousands of farming families which have supplemented their meager income from their farms by taking up some of these domestic industries, and those who have displayed or developed special aptitude for such work have naturally drifted into this wholly industrial life. This has doubtless been the origin of industrial families and gilds. But the point to be especially noted is that this wide development of domestic industries is due to the skill and diligence of Japan's working women. Japanese men have produced the food by which the nation has been fed; her women have produced industries by which the nation has been clothed, as indeed is the case of all great civilized nations. Their long-continued drill, from generation to generation, in home industrial occupations, has produced a high degree of manual dexterity; the eye and hand instinctively move accurately and rapidly in the work, and the result is that Japan's leading industries to this day are dependent on female labor. "Sericulture, silk-reeling, cotton spinning, habutae (a particular variety of silk fabric), and other woven goods, tea-picking, straw and chip braids, etc., are practically dependent on female labor," says the Japanese Year Book for 1910. "But an industry depending on female labor has this peculiarity, namely: it is not compatible with the factory system, but thrives best on the domestic plan. Generally speaking it is in industries which admit of being carried on independently at separate homes by housewives and mothers that skilled female labor is seen to the best advantage. As operatives of family industries Japanese women show an efficiency rarely reached by their foreign sisters." But in this connection we may remind ourselves of the great skill and industry of our grandmothers and preceding generations of women, who lived before the great factory system made their home industrial occupations unnecessary. Japan is merely several decades behind Western lands in her industrial development.