Leading Articles in the Reviews. 



569 



organisations, may be preparing a more vehe- 

 ment social conflict for the near future. 



LABOUR AND WAGES IN JAPAN 

 According to " N.," in The Japan Magazine, 

 Japan is, Hke England, suffering from labour 

 unrest. Looking back no further than the past 

 Hve years, there have been no less than 140 

 strikes among Japanese labourers, involving 

 protest on the part of at least 20,000 workmen ; 

 and it may be said that almost every month 

 shows a remarkable tendency to increase. The 

 whole question of labour and wage fluctuation 

 in Japan is a very interesting one, a grasp of 

 which will enable one to understand what to 

 expect in the Japanese industrial world of the 

 near future. During the last twenty years 

 wages in Japan have in most cases almost 

 doubled. Most economists would be inclined to 

 attribute this to the constant increase in the rise 

 of prices that has marked the course of Japan's 

 progress for the same period ; but a survey of 

 the conditions will show that the rise in wages 

 has been out of all proportion to the rise in 

 prices. The cause of wage fluctuation in Japan 

 seems to lie to a great extent outside the ques- 

 tion of prices. Of course, the rise in prices has 

 been a marked feature of the material progress 

 of the world during the last ten years ; but it is 

 safe to say that the steady rise in the cost of 

 living has been more phenomenal in Japan than 

 in any other land, almost every necessity of life 

 being nearly twice the price it was twenty years 

 ago. At the same time, the rise in wages has 

 been even more remarkable. Taking, for 

 example, the year 1873 as the basis of 100, we 

 have wages for common labour in 1887 at 133, 

 a rise of 33 per cent, in fourteen years ; but this 

 is small compared wMth the rise during the 

 ensuing twenty-three years, which was three 

 times as much. The wages of maidservants, 

 which in 1887 were only 67 sen a month exclu- 

 sive of food, which in Japanese homes is always 

 given with wages, had by 1897 increased to 

 1.24 yen per month, and in igio to 2.96 yen, 

 which, taking 100 as a basis for 1887, would 

 mean 440, or a fourfold increase. Skilled labour 

 is stated to be so scarce in Japan as to be at a 

 premium. 



AGRICULTURAL LABOURERS AND 

 A MINIMUM WAGE. 

 Reginald Lennard, in the Economic Review, 

 states his reasons for believing that the good 

 results of the proposed minimum wage legisla- 

 tion for agricultural labourers are sufficiently 

 assured, and the evil consequences of a suf- 

 ficiently nebulous and doubtful character to 

 justify the experiment. The surgery of State 



action, he asserts, must not be refused merely 

 because it is painful. The patient is in pain as 

 it is. 



In considering the economic consequences 

 which might possibly follow from a determina- 

 tion of wage-rates, if carefully devised, it is 

 necessary to deal with various hypotheses. The 

 law might leave unaff^ected the industrial effici- 

 ency of either masters or men, or both of them. 

 Or it might improve it in either or both cases. 

 Or it might damage the efficiency of either or 

 both parties. Into the various possible com- 

 binations of these hypothetical contingencies it 

 is hardly needful to enter. Nor need the last 

 of them — the supposition that efficiency might 

 deteriorate in consequence of minimum wage 

 regulations — be very seriously considered. Re- 

 taining the power of dismissal, farmers are not 

 likely to tolerate a falling-off in the work of men 

 to whom they are compelled to pay higher 

 wages. And unless the determination increased 

 the efficiency of the labourers in a greater pro- 

 portion than their wages, there seems no reason 

 to suppose that it would have a detrimental 

 effect upon the skill or energy of the employers. 

 If the labourers' work improved precisely in 

 proportion to their wages, the cost of their 

 labour would be unchanged, and the employer's 

 position would remain as it was before. If there 

 was no improvement in the labour, or an im- 

 provement less than proportional to the rise in 

 wages, the farmers' cost of production would 

 be increased. In this case the marginal or least 

 efficient employers would either have to improve 

 their methods or be driven over the margin into 

 bankruptcy ; and it follows that they could only 

 be replaced by better men. 



SUBSTITUTE FOR 

 APPRENTICESHIP. 



Mr. Cyril Jackson, writing in the Edinburgh 

 Review, refers to the decay of apprenticeship, 

 and argues that some other means must be 

 found to ensure reduction of uneducated boy 

 labour : — • 



The only feasible way is to extend the period of com- 

 pulsory school attendance, and to use the additional 

 school time, partly or wholly, for industrial training. 



Apprenticeship of a kind will doubtless remain in 

 some trades, more especially in the artistic crafts — e.g., 

 silversmithing and cabinet-making. Perhaps it will con- 

 tinue in coach and motor building, and in the printing 

 trades it may be maintained by a strong trade union 

 with a shortened term of years. In the building trades 

 it has already almost disappeared. Even the plumbers, 

 who seemed likely by the nature of their work to require 

 more special training, are finding it less important as 

 iron replaces lead. The engineering trades, long the 

 stronghold of the apprentice, are becoming more and 

 more the home of specialised processes. Only premium 

 and privilege apprentices, who are in training for posts 

 as foremen and sub-managers, are now getting an all- 

 round training ; the ordinary apprentices are placed in 



