HARD TIMES IN JAPAN.

Stratford Evening Post, Volume XXXIV, Issue 78, 25 November 1912, Page 8

HARD TIMES IN JAPAN.

The semi-official Japan Times has published a note-worthy article on the condition of the lower classes of Japan. The cost of living keeps going up; no one seems- able to reach out ins hands to bring to the ground the steadily ascending baboon; people helplessly \vatcb its coursm and gasp. At the same time poverty walks about at large, and xi;v miseries of life in. reuse. Above all, the. heads of families of the labouring class seem to have the worst allotment, of miseries and tortures. Many of them are da iy deserting their wives and families. The labouring men cannot support their families- with the scanty wages they get. The little storekeepers find it impossible to balance their lodgers with -the credit ahead of the debit, and are universally discouraged by dull business. At home their wives need money and their children are simply crying aloud from starvation. The hard-pressed and miserable husbands go out in the morning to search, for work, and many of them never return again at night. Daily the charity lodging-houses are crowded by women anjd children begging a

night’s lodging, to drift away the next morning to return again at night starving. Many of thorn are sick, hushpiidless and fatherless, penniless and homeless. Some of them follow the paths of their husbands to death.

According to further details given, their • hospitals are .overcrowded, and the arrangements ,for the succour of such poor people are most inadequate.