LABOUR IN JAPAN.

New Zealand Herald, Volume LIII, Issue 16310, 17 August 1916, Page 8

LABOUR IN JAPAN.

-♦ \ CONTRAST TO NEW ZEALAND. I i I LONG HOURS AND LOW WAGE. I I WOMEN AND CHILDREN WORKERS. Labour conditions in Japan, as described by Mr. A. J. Lamb, of Christchurch, who ha? just returned from the East, would not appeal to the worker in New Zealand. A seven days' week, said Mr. Lamb, is observed. There are only two one-day holidays granted each month. Woman and child labour is employed to a great extent, and little pay and long hours are the rule. The average working day extends to 10 or 11 hours, even for children of eight or nine years of age. There is no free education, and there is no bar to children being sent to work at an earlyage. ,A boy joins himself to a manufacturer, and if the employees do not num-| ber more than about 30 "they live together with their employer. The boy is trained, and children of 11 years of age in some branches of work would exceed in skill some adult New Zealand workers. Boys, he said, are specially clever with the sewing machine. Children are emI ployed in glass-blowing factories 10 hours a day, and they carry hot moulds from worker to worker. They will even hold moulds in place to receive molten glass. j Japanese women are employed in all kinds I of work, even in the hauling of heavy i carts, while the women coalers of Nagasaki, at lOd a day. will coal a vessel, with a speed which can hardly be equalled in most ports. The average rickshaw man earns 30 sen (7£d) a day, on which he keeps a wife and family. Wharf I labourers earn about 60 sen (Is 3d). In spite of these low wages and long | hours the Japanese appear to be a happy. i I healthy people, and there is no labour . j problem. The teaching of the schools is that Japan has been far behind all other nations, and that to catch up with their ) I competitors the Japanese must work I twice as hard. That, in industry, con- ' eluded Mr. Lamb, is the spirit of Japan.