1889.] PUBLIC DOCUMENT — No. 4. 107 



the remainder of the annual production, although their shoes 

 cost less than six cents per annum for each person. 



The average annual salary of the postmasters in 1876, 

 about four thousand in number, was $17.66 ; in 1877, $22.20. 

 Certainly not a serious provocation for turning the rascals 

 out, should a change of administration occur. The mean 

 compensation of American postmasters last year (over fifty- 

 five thousand in number) was $216.50. 



The Japanese farmer tills seven-tenths of an acre, while 

 the American farmer cultivates seven acres, or just ten times 

 as much, for each one of the agricultural population. The 

 average value of tlie crops per acre in both cases is the same, 

 being about twenty-two dollars. 



A dwelling worth two hundred dollars is a rarer and finer 

 mansion there than one costing two thousand dollars in 

 America, while fewer families expend fifty dollars for fur- 

 nishing in Japan than there are that devote ten times as 

 much to the same purposes here. 



The ratio of one to ten seems to represent approximately 

 therefore the relative efficiency of the two races, with their 

 attendant systems of civilization and government. 



No event is more significant of the completeness of the 

 social and political transformation of Japan in our day, than 

 the disestablishment of feudalism, and the peaceful disarma- 

 ment of the Samurai, the privileged two-sworded or mili- 

 tary class, comprising over a million men, in whose feudal 

 chiefs, the daimios, the civil as well as military authority of 

 the empire was practically vested. A step towards this end 

 was effected in the overthrow of the Shogun in 1868 ; and 

 in March, 1876, just three months before my arrival at 

 Tokio, the wearing of swords by this class was terminated 

 by the mandate of the Mikado. 



The Samurai or two-sworded class constitute an inferior 

 order of nobility, outranking, in the sequence named, farm- 

 ers, artisans, merchants, coolies, and, at the foot of the 

 scale, the socially despised tanners, butchers and execution- 

 ers ; and the feudal code armed each member of that class 

 with authority to cut down, on the most trivial provocation, 

 any of the thirty million plebeians of the empire. 



Concerning their duty in dealing with oppressors of equal 



