Golden Age, February 16, 1921

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Feb.16,1921, Vol II, No. 37 R3f FaV***«< everg otter ■KM. week at 35 Myrtle Avenue, Brooklyn, Hew York City

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V0LC3H 2 WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 16, 1921 NUMB88 37-

CONTENTS o/ the GOLDEN AGE

. LABOR AND ECONOMICS

. __ T, ........ nan Jspentwo Labor end Bco-

Japanese Industrieo------280

SOCIAL AND EDUCATIONAL Japaneoe Education__270 Japaneoe Women —‘

Tipinimi Charaeteriatici 279 Superstitions Dylan

MANUFACTURING and mining ■ Swift and Company Advertising—

FINANCE—COMMERCE—TRANSPORTATION

Japaneoe Transportation 281

Japanese Finance...

Banking and Pawnbroking 283

Changes In Banking—...233

Banking Power_____.

Bonking Profits

Federal Btatm Banka-

Depression of Bonds

Boosting of Interest

Restriction of Credit

Methods of Securing Me> bers

Workers Credit Unions

British Banking Items

Sooth American Bailways

AGRICULTURE AND BUSBANDRY

Discovery of Papago.-____________________________ ...292

HOUSEWIFERY AND HYGIENE Suggestions In Dietetics__J

TRAVEL AND MISCELLANY

Japan's Wonderful Growth 280 I®, Forei^ Lands—-Beth-The Cains aad Abels—

RELIGION AND PHILOSOPHY

Worship of the Mikado......276 Election and Free Grace...302

Bible Study........301 Juvenile Bible Study.

The Church s Mission.------301 Restitution (poem)

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Golden Age

Volume n

New York, Wednesday, February 16, 1921

Number 37

Japan—The Frankenstein of Christendom (Part One)

GOD'S promise of a Messiah that should eventually bear rule over all the earth, conveyed to the Jews, and borne by them into all ’ quarters, has been a distinct blessing to those to whom this message has come in its purity, and a curse to those to whom it has come' in polluted form.

It was this promise of a world-wide king that led Nebuchadnezzar, the Babylonian, to become the first successful aspirant for universal dominion; the same widespread information that brought in Cyrus, the Medo-Persian, as the head of the second world- <empire; Alexander, the Grecian, as the head of the third; and Caesar, and later the Pope, as the head of the fourth. It was this idea of assuming to take the place reserved for Messiah that made the Kaiser aspire similarly, and that caused the ruin of the German . people. Mistaught,, a great and

A YOUNG medical student is supposed to have created, out of materials at hand, a great living organism, unlike any other living thing,which, being rendered furious by cravings which could not be appeased, committed numerous atrocities and finally slew his maker. Will Japan complete the work of destroying Christendom, her maker!

honest people were led to believe that their ruler was in special relationship with the Almighty; and that they, with him, were to be God’s elect “little flock”, rulers over the earth.

This same idea of assuming Messiah’s functions lingers to some extent even in the United States. During the World War Catholic in-quisitorff called upon America’s greatest religious speaker and demanded to know where he would speak on the four succeeding Sundays. Knowing that his own motives and addresses on Bible themes were irreproachable, and not the legitimate concern of meddling politicians, he declined to give the information, advising his interrogators to return to the person who sent them and tell him that it was none of his business. In an awe-struck voice the spokesman said: “But it is the Government that wants to know”. Back came the answer; “Who are the Government! Men, are they not!” This was a revelation to the questioner; but it closed the discussion and illustrates the point, that the Governments of our day are not blessed with “all power in heaven and in earth” and should * not assume it. On the other hand they should be very particular to see that they do not trespass upon or in any way interfere with the things that pertain to God.

With this thought of earth’s false Messiahs in mind, consider the following statement which appeared in Niroku, a Japanese newspaper, and you have the root of the Japanese problem that is now engaging the attention of thoughtful men in every quarter of the globe: .

“The Imperial Family of Japan is as worthy of respect as is God, and is the embodiment of benevolence and justice. The Imperial Family of Japan is parent not only over 60,000,000 people, but of all mankind on earth. In the eyes of the Imperial Family all races are' but one and the same. It stands above all racial considerations. All human disputes, therefore, may be settled in accordance with its immaculate justice. The League of Nations, which is proposed to save mankind < from war, can attain its real object only by placing the Imperial Family of Japan at its head. To attain its object the League must have a strong punitive force of superior national and superior racial character, and this force can only be found in the Imperial Family of Japan.”

As a matter of fact, at the first session of the League of Nations Assembly the Japanese had two or three times as many persons present as had any other nation. Their monopolization of many of Geneva’s hotels and automobiles brought them much notoriety, but the reverse of popularity.

Worship of the Mikado

IT HAS always been a favorite device ef rulers to maintain themselves in power by hornswoggling the people into special reverence for them, but in Japan this goes to the extreme form of actual worship. The imperial family is supposed to have been of divine origin, having landed in Japan about GGO B- C., when the present dynasty came into power.

Every year thousands of the school children of Japan are taken to worship at the shrine of the Mikado: and not only are their school books carefully prepared by the Government to instill into their minds the conviction that the emperor is a god, but the theaters, story-tellers and motion pictures are all utilized to exalt the same idea.

When the crown prince enters the presence of the emperor he is compelled to enter the throne room through a side door and to crawl into the presence of the emperor on his hands and knees. Hirohito, the present crown prince, by the way, is now nineteen years of age and his education will be rounded out in 1921 by a ten-months sight-seeing trip that will embrace the United States, Europe and India. His marriage will occur when he returns.

It would be considered profanation by the Japanese to show the face of their emperor on a eoin. Fifty years ago it was illegal for a citizen to look upon him at all. The emperor helps the program along by making a pilgrimage every little while to one of the shrines of Ise, or dispatches special messengers to pay respects to his ancestors and acquaint them with important affairs of state.

As a ruler the emperor has almost no actual power. The Government is really an oligarchy of Big Business, a group of professional rulers that use the Mikado as a figurehead. In times of famine it is, theoretically, the emperor that comes forward with millions of dollars for the relief of the poor. Always he is set before the people ik thte best of lights. Actually he is a poor olcHnan, ill with diabetes and with weakened mind, unable longer to attend ceremonies nr grant audiences..

Slowly the Japanese masses are emerging

from the shadow of this colossal superstition. S Formerly all street traffic was suspended for an B hour before the Mikado passed through the

streets, and even then the passage was through

cordons of troops drawn up the length of the

route. Now this suspension has been reduced

to fifteen minutes and the guard is. merely a @ police guard. Occupants of upper floors along S the route, however, must still vacate their « rooms, or close their blinds tightly at such [f times, as no one is allowed to look down upon 0 the emperor, literally or figuratively. . b

Formerly the emperor travelled by special' a train, with the railroad lined on both sides by school children, compelled to stand for hours ' until the train passed. But now, in view of the J very crowded condition of traffic, the emperor's coach is occasionally attached to a regular train l-| and the people need not, as formerly, leave the | station when he alights. This gradual climbing down out j)f the clouds must seem like an odd business to the-Mikado, but he probably figures * j that it is better to climb down than to. fall. । Japanese Education '•

AI THE very time that Germany was giving closest attention to the Kaiser’s claim of

divine right to rule, Germany had the

reputation of having the best schools in the

world. Those schools-were carefully planned to exalt the Kaisei in the minds of the pupils

and to lead them to think that death in his

behalf would be a privilege.

It is not much wonder, then, that Japanese ruling classes early perceived that the German

educational system was best adapted to their

scheme of rulership; and as the Japanese are d the most perfect of imitators they have built ' j up a system, after German models, designed to 1 do for Japanese youths exactly what German | education did for German youths. .

In the first seven books which the Japanese child uses in his studies there is but one refer- '’ ence to any foreign country, and that is an uncomplimentary, one. Uniformity of thought is w aimed at in art, literature, religion and polities, J j and that uniformity must be in line with the r'-j Government's ideas. (America has had some of ' t that in late years, too; so do’not become too much excited over the way the poor Japanese H have been hoodwinked) Multitudes of the child-

\ ren have been led to believe, and do believe, that the electric light, steamboat and street car are all Japanese inventions which have been copied

; by foreigners.

. As students the Japanese are famous for their industry and ability. When at school, in their own country or abroad, they never allow \ athletics or social affairs to come between them and their studies.

When a Japanese boy goes away to school in America or Europe he is conducted to the rail. way station by all his relatives and all their ' friends and acquaintances, and they bestow ’ presents upon him according to their means and their intimacy of acquaintance. When he returns, the youth must remember each of these gifts appropriately, and woe betide him if the return gifts omit anybody or fail of substan-i tially equalling in value those which he received | at departure.

As missionary efforts in all eastern countries are largely along the lines of secular education, the Japanese apparently concluded that in some way the uniting of religion and education made _ .. for the prosperity of the white races, and have i attempted, as in other lines, to steal the white

■ man's thunder. They have done this, in part,

by printing Buddhist "Bibles”, many passages in which are copied from the Holy Scriptures, with the name "Buddha” inserted in place of » the name "Jesus”. Little children are also taught to sing, “Buddha loves me, this I know”, etc., in place of "Jesus loves me, this I know, for the Bible tells me so”.

Once each year, in August, the Japanese have a feast in honor of the devil. At that time everything is done to propitiate him, so as to induce him to favor relatives who are supposedly already in hell, as well as to make him good humored toward themselves when they arrive.

As in America, so in Japan there is a press, 1 engaged^in doing about the same class of work i that the American press did during the war. Many of these papers are largely devoted to fanning resentment against whatever people the Government is at the time fighting or planning to figlit. There is a censorship, always in ’ operation, controlling incoming and outgoing news to suit the purposes of the hour.

Under the guise of the governmentally-fostered "religions” scheme, called Shintoism (ancestor-worship), numerous priests who have become enamored of Bolshevism are now discussing economic questions in a way that causes the Japanese financial powers great alarm. Under the cloak of loyalty to the imperial house this new cult, called Omotokyo, is making great inroads among the officers and men of the army, especially the reservists; and present laws are such that the Government cannot conveniently interfere. '

Such doctrines, if taught by politicians, would be stopped; but the priests are not so easy to handle. They find ready converts among students and farmers who do not own the land they till. Collections are taken up "for God”, and the money is spent for advertising space in the press, so that the new doctrines may be more widely spread.

Japanese Militarism .

APOLOGISTS point out that, in the twenty-five hundred years in which it has existed as an empire, Japan has engaged in only three foreign wars, all of which have been within the last thirty years; and that for two hundred years before Commodore Perry opened Japan to intercourse with other nations, in 1853, she had not had any kind of war, civil or foreign. - However, this does not change the fact that the ancient heroes of Japan, the Samurai, so-called, were all militarists, supposedly mighty with the sword.

As was somewhat similarly the case in Germany, it is still the rule in Japan, that the toys of the boy babies are military toys, tiny swords, spears, bows and arrows, sold on certain days at certain shrines as a part of the "worship”; and the boys wear caps of military form to impress upon them the idea that when they grow up they are to be soldiers of the Mikado, fighting for the Japanese variety of the "Me und Gott” swindle.

Japan has been under military instruction since 1870, and is saturated with the philosophy of "Kultur” that “might makes right”. During the war, although they drove the Germans out of Kiao Chau in accordance with their treaty with Great Britain, the people as a whole were fully in sympathy with Germany and fully expected her to win the war. While in Japan, the German prisoners of war were treated with

marked consideration, and when the German flag was again recently raised over the Yokohama consulate there was a public celebration of large proportions.

As was the case in Germany, so in Japan, there is an overbearing military caste, bent on committing the nation to great foreign undertakings. The men in charge of this machine are not, as was the Kaiser, ordained ministers in the Lutheran Church, nor in any church. They accept none of the principles of the Christian religion and literally fear neither God, man, nor the devil. They admire frightfulness, too.

As was the case in Germany, so in Japan, there is universal conscription (the only country on the Pacific practising conscription, moreover) and there is the same theory that once a citizen of the fatherland always a citizen. If a Japanese living outside of Japan, China, or Siberia, returns to Japan and remains over thirty days he may be conscripted for immediate military service if less than 37 years old. Wherever he goes he is still a Japanese citizen, registered and card indexed, and subject to the 'call of the Mikado.

As was the case in Germany, so in Japan, the sword ciankers have been everywhere. It is scarcely a year since railway officials' and station-masters ceased wearing swords, and military men keep coming and going constantly.

Among the great masses of the people is the settled conviction (due to belief in the military teachers and the successful prosecution of wars against China, Russia and Germany) that Japan holds the place she has among the nations because of her capacity for war. This is literally true. The hyenas masquerading as Christian nations have all shown by their acts that their chief reliance is not upon God but upon force, and this applies all the way down from Great Britain with her mighty battleships to the Pope with his machine-gun battalion of Swiss Guards.

Japan’s Mighty Navy

AVING the conviction that there is no future for a Japan that does not possess a powerful fleet, and having a defenseless coast line of seven thousand miles in the islands which constitutffiher possessions, Japan has created a navy that makes her now the third maritime power of the world. Great Britain'comes first with 846 ships; the United States second with 560; and Japan has 332, now considerably more than France.

Shipbuilders concede that no nation in the world can surpass the Japanese in shipbuilding, their record of building and delivering the Kai-fuku Maru, of 5,800 tons, in twenty-nine days, having been approached only by the next best record, that of a Michigan shipbuilding firm, which constructed a vessel of less than half the size in the same number of days.

Japan has the most powerful and the most expensive battleship in the world, the Muts costing $40,000,000. She has completed, or nearly so, sixteen battleships each one of which will carry main batteries exceeding twelve inches in calibre. Some of these ships have as many as ten sixteen-inch guns on them. The Japanese know how to use them, too, as they showed in the quick disposition which they made of the Russian fleet twenty years ago.

Japan’s budget for 1921-1922 amounted to $781,000,000, of which $321,000,000 is for the navy, $122,500,000 for the army, and the balance, 44 percent, is for other purposes. Concerning the army estimate, the New York Times for November 25, 1920, said that it showed a decrease of $5,000,000 from the current military budget, and two days later, that it represented an increase of 50 percent. This is characteristic of news from Japan. - •

One who would judge the meaning of news from Japan must read the various contradictory statements, and then judge from past performances what is most reasonable to believe and to expect. Baron Sadakichi Kato. Chief of the Japanese Naval Board of Education, recently said that Japan cannot continue her naval expansion, being unable to _hnild more than the eight capital ships author!zed by the last regular Diet; while Viscount Ishii, at the League of Nations Assembly, Geneve., December 11, 1920, made the statement that Japan will continue the expansion of her navy until the United States reduces its naval program.

Militarism is said to be much less popular with the common people in Japan than it was some years ago. The defeat of Germany was a setback for the militarists, and popular sentiment is against the extensive use of the Japanese army on the Asiatic continent. Applications for admission to the officers' training schools have also fallen off materially.

Nevertheless, the mass of the people are still with the militarists; and the General Staff can and does undertake operations without the consent or even the knowledge of the Premier, so that his most solemn promise on any subject affecting their movements counts for no more than did their own lightly-held promises. '

Years ago, foreseeing the partial awakening of the people, the military party of Japan had the ministers of War and Navy made responsible, not to the Premier, but directly to the emperor, or those who represent him, so that any criticism of either army or navy becomes a criticism of the emperor and thus of God—a long-headed scheme to continue the time-hon-. ored policy of Satan to make independent thinkers guilty of blasphemy and sedition.

Japanese Liberties

THE Japanese constitution is modeled after the German constitution; and Japan has therefore a restricted franchise, the same as had Germany. Only the payers of taxes may vote, and these constitute only about 3,500,000, or six percent of the population. Several attempts at universal suffrage have failed; and will continue to fail as long as the military and ruling classes persist in following in the way to ruin trod by the German, Austrian and Russian monarchies. .

The present regime is the most liberal that Japan has ever enjoyed, but it still leaves much to be desired by foreigners; No foreigner may open a law office in Japan, although there are Japanese barristers in America and Great Britain. No foreign ships are allowed to carry passengers or freight between ports of Japan, although Japanese boats ply between the ports of other nations; and a foreigner in Japan may not eVfen own a motor boat in his own name.

Japanese Characteristics

THE Japanese while in many respects the most remarkable people in the world are, like all other Aembers of our fallen race, full of inconsistencies. They have no swear-words in their language, and seldom give vent to words of anger or irritation; yet they have shown that they can lie extremely vindictive and cruel.

There has not been a holdup in the streets of __ Tokio in twenty years; and yet suicide is so common that a few years ago it became necessary to drain a lake in Kobe, because of the immense number of people who had drowned 6 themselves in its waters.

Rape is never known in Japan, but fathers . ;

will rent their daughters to foreigners or others 'i as temporary wives; and in connection with the houses of ill-fame, which are officially recognized or permitted by the Government, the girl , inmates are displayed in cages to facilitate selections.

The Japan Chronicle reports that in the Si- s berian campaign the Japanese on one occasion ' politely requested and accepted as a favor the ' use of a wireless station from which they sent out instruction how to destroy the very people 1 whose hospitality they were then enjoying. i

A Japanese has by instinct a natural aversion to saying anything that he thinks will be disa- ’ greeable to the hearer; and yet he has succeeded j in a brief time in getting himself disliked throughout Asia, Australia and America by a $ series of acts which have seemed to those ; peoples disagreeable in the extreme. .

The Japanese are the greatest laughter-lov- ' ।

ing people of Asia, and yet .their inability to ■ appreciate humor has been noted by all observers. They are docile in the extreme, and , yet they have no regard for patents, copy- ■ ’

rights, or anything else that they can imitate. * They are great manufacturers and merchants but are said to have lost many customers in Eastern Asia by making and selling inferior < fabrics, loosely woven and loaded with paste to simulate heavy, durable goods.

Japanese fathers and mothers do not kiss . their children, and yet there is no land where the obedience of children to parents is more . marked or where ancestor worship has gone to greater lengths. They are severely anti-foreign, ' and yet they take instinctively to Western dress and ways.

The Japanese are so industrious and frugal ‘ that the average American cannot compete with them. Japan has no tramps, no drunkards, no bomb throwers, no mob organizers. As a ■ people, the Japanese are proud, sensitive, cleanly, hospitable and ambitious.

Although they occasionally get into trouble , for gambling and fighting among themselves; yet they are never found implicated in thefts or robberies. They have great loyalty to rulers and give the ruling classes very little trouble in any quarter of the globe. They are one of the most self-reliant peoples in the world, and regard themselves as superior to any other humans.

Japan** Wonderful Growth ,

ONE of the men who were with Commodore

Perry when Japan was brought into thefam-ily of nations has just died, and there are plenty of men now living who can remember when the Nipponese islands were cut off from all outside intercourse. It was only twenty-one years ago, in 1899. that the Japanese were first permitted to try foreigners in their own courts.

Here is a land that is practically ■without homes, in the sense in which Westerners understand the term. The houses are without solid walls, ceilings, doors or windows, tables or chairs, beds or cookstoves, pots or pans. The people get along without boots or shoes and without bread. Rice and fish are the food, and mats suffice for beds. There are no “home fires burning", and in the winter the people suffer terribly with the cold.

Here is a country that jumped at one moment from barbarism to civilization. Is it any, wonder that they still have something to learn, or that they have absorbed all too well the hypocrisies for which the Christian people of this age will some day be noted when the weight of their armaments is balanced against the brotherly love they have claimed in Christ's name?

The total area of Japan proper (excluding Koeed and Formosa) is a little less than the state of California. It is about one-half the area of that part of the United States north of the Ohio and Potomac Rivers and east of the Mississippi. Yet in-that area 57,150,000 people find th>ir maintenance, or one-tenth more than the American population of the whole area mentioned.

. On account of the mountainous nature of the country, qnly pne-seventh of the superficial area of Japan is susceptible of cultivation: yet more than 30.0(1)-,000 of the people are engaged in farming, and the farms have steadily shrunk until they average less than three acres each.

The Japanese population is increasing at the

rate of 700,000 per year; so here we have a density of population of about 2,688 per square , mile of cultivable land, a condition unlike that to be found elsewhere in the world, the in- . habitants obtaining their food from about one-quarter of an acre per capita. , ■

Japan’s density of population as compared with her total area is surpassed by England, . Belgium and Holland, but there is very little . 1 land in any of these countries that caunot be cultivated. Her first census took place on October 1, 1920. Many of the citizens were much perturbed at this, not understanding clearly its significance.

Japanese Industries ?

IN A very brief time Japan has become one of the great manufacturing countries of the world. She has a few very large corporations which combine banking, shipping, mining, manufacturing and continental exploitation in their activities. These, with the army and navy, " , really constitute the government. Thus Big -I Business, with a few men, operates the government and controls the people? . .•

There are a half-dozen large steel works in ’ .

Japan, the principal one being a government , plant employing 15,000 men. This plant produces about 400,000 tons per year, and all other ’ plants together about 600,000 tons more. This is a large output, especially when one considers the shortness of the time that Japan has been engaged in the iron business. The ore for these works is almost all imported from China and Manchuria. ■

The number of persons employed in all ; branches of the electric industry in Japan is over 30,000. The profits in this line of business and in all other lines were very large during the war. In 1918 the average dividend of the thirtv-three cotton spinning companies for the first six months was 50.27 percent, or at the rate of 100 percent per year; and although the growth the previous year had been very great, yet in the year 1918 the total number of factories of all kinds in Tokio doubled. The exports of the United States to Japan increased twelvefold from 1909 to 1919.

The war caused Japan to produce at home many things which she formerly imported, thereby greatly stimulating her development.

Oue of her great steamship companies, the Nippon Yusen Kaisha (Japanese Mail Steamship Company) has vessels running to most of the principal ports of the world, and distributed in 1919 dividends of 100 percent, of which 50 percent was in cash and 50 percent in stock.

The wave of prosperity caused by the war made many Asiatic and African millionaires, hundreds or' whom came to Europe after the ■war to spend their money. They seem especially, to have made Germany their objective, perhaps thinking thus to participate further in some of the business which Germany has lost.

Japan is up to the minute in mining, electrical, photographic and surgical ’work. She has a wireless station that sends and receives messages direct to and from Germany, and is able to communicate with Buenos Aires.

Japanese Labor and Economics

THERE is a great deal of poverty in the large cities and much discontent. In the last five years the cost of living has risen approximately three hundred percent. Rice costs twelve times what it did thirty years ago and three times what it did at the outbreak of the war.

The standard of living is rising, accompanied by the usual resistance of those who would like to continue to earn 100 percent dividends on their investments every year. In the country districts, peasant proprietorship is on the wane and absentee landownership is on the increase. It seems strange to read of two thousand indignant citizens raiding the residences of directors of an electric light company as a protest against an unwarranted increase in electric light rates. In America, instead of raiding such men, we put their names and their pictures on the front pages of the newspapers arid send them to Congress as patriots and saversSjf the nation.

Wages in Japan, even in the face of the 100 percent dividends, remain, for the most part, far- below $1 per day. Carpenters receive 65 cents to $,1.25, per day: laborers 50 cents to 75 cents. Agd the labor, although cheap in price, is said in American financial papers to lie poor in quality. It is claimed that machinery made for Japan has to be virtually "fool-proof”.

The factory laws, modeled after some of those in effect in Western countries, are said to have been enacted merely to enable the Japanese to explain to visitors what their laws are. The operation of these laws was postponed by legislation until 1931, twelve years after their passage, to give time for ‘adjustment” of capital and labor. .

Cotton mill operatives have been working twelve-hour shifts, recently reduced somewhat. The mill supplies bed and board, paying, additionally, a maximum of about fifty cents per day. Of these operatives, 43.7 percent receive less than twenty-five cents per day.

Until 1919 the right of labor to organize was denied by the Government, and strikes can be and sometimes are checked by the police; but labor is becoming more restless, alert, aggressive and determined. In 1914 there were fifty strikes, in 1918 there were four hundred and seventeen, in 1919 there were over a thousand, and in 1920 there were still more. •

In one of these strikes the street-car employes of Tokio secured a six-hour day. In that strike, and in others, the strikers reported for work, but operated every machine as slowly and inefficiently as possible until their demands were" granted. In some cases they have demanded the right to elect and to discharge foremen. Strange news, strange world.

Japanese 7ransportation

S WILL be hereafter shown, the Japanese are doing some migrating, but they are essentially a non-migratory people. The people wish to live and work in Japan, and in the warmer islands belonging to her. One large island in the group. Hokkaido, with a climate about the same at that of New England, is quite sparsely populated, owing to the fact that the people do not like to live there during winter.

These conditions make Japan a manufacturing and, of necessity, an importing nation, but though she can make steel, and is making it in large quantities, yet at present it can be purchased more cheaply in America than it can be made at home. Japan has hardly any iron of her own, and the coal is of inferior quality. Her basis of supply for both coal and iron is and must he China and China’s neighbors to the north. This means that the coal and ores must be imported, and they cannot be imported without ships.

Japan has no cotton or wool or hides or oil. All of these must be imported. In this respect she is in the same position in the Orient that Great Britain is in the Occident, but is without the raw materials that gave Britain a start, and is without other of the things that make for efficient industrial life.

Japan needs to develop good roads, needs many more trolley lines, and has a railroad system that is utterly inadequate to her needs. At present there are barely six thousand miles of railway in the empire; but the roads are being extended and modernized, so as to enable them to handle the traffic they must bear.

Along with all the other demands on the transportation systems is that of handling great quantities of building materials for the modern buildings, constructed after the Western manner, which are driving out the old wooden and paper buildings of the Japan of yesterday.

Ship captains complain that in Japanese ports the officials deliberately delay foreign vessels, while all Japanese ships are promptly handled. This is no way to build up a permanent commerce. Letters posted to people in the vicinity often take days or weeks to deliver. Telephones can hardly be secured at all, many firms having waited years for installations.

Japanese Women

THE condition of women in the Orient is gradually improving. Many Japanese women are engaging in business as clerks, stenographers and saleswomen. Many of them, too, are now turning up their noses at cotton and are demanding silk kimonos and silk stockings, while the men demand the latest Broadway styles. All the bus lines in Tckio are served by women conductresses.

Two hundred thousand young girls a year are brought from the country into the textile factories. It is estimated that only eighty thou-sandSif these ever return to the paternal roof, quite a few with consumption, due to long hours and insufficient food. Of the female workers in the textile factories, 15 percent are under 15 years of age, 42 percent are between the ages of 15 and 20, and 43 percent over 20 years of age.

Japanese men are supposed to be very polite, but are reported as not hesitating to crowd working girls off the sidewalks, though they think more of their own women folk than of the women of other races and nationalities, and seldom marry white women or vice versa.

A poster published by women in Japan asks husbands to get up at the same time as wives; not to scold wives in the presence of visitors or children; to let wives know when they leave home, where they go, and when they will return; to fix sums for wives’ personal use; to refrain from demanding services which they can perform for themselves; to avoid setting children a bad example; to allow wives certain hours for reading and studying, and to avoid calling wives disrespectful names. The attention of American husbands is called to these suggestions. They will bear study. '

It has always been the custom in Japan for both sexes to bathe together, naked, in public. When the attention of Japanese statesmen was called to the fact that Western visitors considered this scandalous, the matter was rectified by compelling the males to bathe on one side of a rope and the females on the other; that was all.

Japanese Finance

JAPANESE achievements in finance have been remarkable. In one year they switched over from the silver standard to the gold standard. They have a western banking system. The total registered capital of all banks and corporations at the end of last May amounted to $6,133,475,000, or more than three times what it was in 1916. They have redeemed their external debt and are now able to lend large sums to the old world. They have large cash deposits in America, including investments in U.S. bonds.

Japan recently had a severe financial pinch, in April, 1920, caused by a coterie of New York bankers suddenly calling huge loans that had been made to silk exporters^ As a result, the price of silk fell from $18 to $9 per pound, there were many-bankruptcies, and one bank failure, But conditions are as good there now as anywhere—which is not saying very much.

When the pinch came, thousands of tons of American goods, worth millions of dollars, were compelled to accumulate in the warehouses because the consignees could not accept them. Piers and lighters were filled with them, and the storehouses in the interior of the country were in the same condition.

(To he continued) .

Banking and Pawnbroking

E ABLY in 1920 the Security National Bank of Dallas loaned $55 (presumably on a $55 note and at 6 percent per annum), to two girls of Koppell, Texas, respectively 11 and 13 years of age, for the purchase of a hog. During the season the girls raised a family of porkers, expended $66 more for feed, and at the end of the season disposed of their brood for $418.50. AU can see that in this transaction the supplying of the hog and its feed were necessary parts of the production of the bacon. The supplying of this money to these girls was banking in one of its simplest, most helpful forms. It is such an act as any prosperous farmer in the neighborhood who had confidence in the girls might have performed.

If the bank above named, not knowing of the reliability of the two girls, and not taking the pains to inform themselves, and not sufficiently acquainted with the possibility of making money out of pork, had required a chattel mortgage on the hog and its family before lending -the money, the transaction would have been pawnbroking. In the banking business in the United States there are some bankers and some pawnbrokers. A real banker is a blessing to his community; but a man in the banking business who has the instincts of a pawnbroker is a curse to his community, because he takes the place of somebody who would be a help to it. The banker ' builds; the pawnbroker posing as a banker, discourages and defeats the whole community.

There would be comparatively little poverty and shiftlessness in any country if the poor boy or girl or man or woman in need of education or of tools or hog or cow or horse or of other simple foundation for making money could obtain credit to secure it; and the supplying of such capital is the proper work of a bank. Every person who is honest, as these girls were honest, industrious as they were industrious, and who has some good judgment, as they must have had good judgment, has a foundation for credit with a real banker.' '

Not all 0$ the hankers of Texas are as helpful as the Security National Bank of Dallas appears to have been in this instance, but some of them have done a pawnhroking business such as would cause a decent pawnbroker to hang his head for shame. The Comptroller of the Currency sets this out in the following paragraph in his report for the year 1915:

“Of 105 loans reported in Texas, 71 bore interest at 25 percent, and 4 were at 100 percent. Ln one instance it reached 514 percent; while on 29 loans investigated, the interest ranged from 36 percent to 2,000 percent per annum. One Oklahoma bank reported 184 loans at rates exceeding 150 percent, of which 75 were at rates exceeding 300 percent. Thirty-three borrowers paid interest charges of 500 percent or more.”

What honest man can read that paragraph without having his cheeks burn with indignation at the thieves that have imposed such burdens upon honest men! Thousands of farms in Oklahoma which rightfully belong to those who planned to make them into permanent homes -have come into possession of banks, owing to the ruinous rates of 55 percent to 100 percent interest, exacted by those banks. Moreover, it is claimed that men who fight against such a fraudulent system in Oklahoma are sure to be ruined politically; for there are enough such banks, and they stand so firmly together, that no one. man can fight them successfully.

The cities have suffered in the same way as the country, and from the same cause; namely, the difficulty which honest, capable men experience in trying to secure reasonable credit at reasonable terms. A study of the loan sharks of New York city, made by the Russell Sage Foundation, showed that interest rates ran as high as 280 percent, 300 percent and 329 percent per annum. The books of one of these concerns showed a profit of 28 percent in one month. The men to whom these loans were made were admitted by the money-lenders themselves to he almost all honest, industrious men, in temporary need of money because of sickness or death in the family. They needed urgently the aid of a good banker, and fell into the hands of thieves. The conditions under which they were compelled to borrow were such as t > drive some of these men to desperation, destroy their homes and turn them into vagalxmds.

Changes in Banking ■

RIOR to 1862 all banks were State banks, and almost exclusively local in <Irnir operations. It was the purpose of ail these hanks, and should still be the purpose of all of them, to aid men to produce wealth, distribute it to market and convert labor into capital. But in sixty years there have been vast changes in all lines of industry, and in no line has this been more pronounced than in banking. Indeed, many of these changes originated with the banks themselves.

For example, it was the banks of New York that organized and brought into being virtually all the great trusts and monopolies of the country. At first these great combinations were largely manipulated by the savings of the people invested in the great insurance companies (the straggle for the financial control of which made such an interesting story in the history of our country some years ago) and were supported by additional savings of the people withdrawn from country banks for the purpose.

The method of procedure was simple. It was merely pawnbroking on a huge scale. Here is a property worth $200,000,000. That is all it would cost to create it new. This property is earning large sums and may be manipulated so as to earn even greater sums. Let us buy it at $200,000,000 and give it a new name, get up some beautifully engraved “bonds” and stocks and sell it in small lots to bondholders and stockholders for $1,000,000,000. We will get our $200,000,000 in cash from the insurance companies and country banks by offering them a reasonable share of the profits on the transaction. The country banks will make more by going along with us than they will by helping people to raise hogs and otherwise to build up the interests of the local communities where they are. Perhaps, if we get $50,000,000 of this amount from the country banks, we may let them have back $100,000,000 in stocks and bonds of the new trust.

Such might be the method of reasoning adoptecb-by the organizers of some of these monopolies. They seem not to consider what a great injustice is done to the country as a whole; and this thing has been going on for thirty years or mpre., The country district has put up $50,000,000 in cash, and gets back stock and bonds whicl cost the trust organizer $20,000,000. Moreover, it has lost the nse of the $50,000,000. It may or may not be satisfied with its returns on the stocks or bonds which eventually find their way into the strong boxes of the bank’s depositors; but it has nevertheless made a present of $30,000,000 to some great trust, at the expense of the local industries, and to the detriment of the whole country.

The effect of methods like these, with scores of modifications, has been to increase and centralize banking power greatly, and to make the common man who helped to create the instrument wonder sometimes what will be the outcome of this thing.

Banking Power

THE banking power of the United States is now nearly $46,000,000,000, or about nine times what it was in 1890, and three times the estimated banking power of the world in that year. It should be explained, however, that much of this enormous gain in bank resources is the outcome of the national bond issues and of the inflation based thereon, and is not wholly an actual gain in the nation’s wealth.

In the six years ending December 31, 1919, the national banks grew more than in the fifty-one years previously, their increase in that time amounting to 101 percent. Within this period-the resources increased in this class of banks from $11,296,355,000 to $22,711,375,000. In the year 1919 one in every six persons in the United States had an account in a national bank, and not one of these persons lost one dollar in such a bank in that year.

The national banks were first started in 1862, to help Uncle Sam finance the Civil War. They alone among banks have the power of issuing currency. The State banks used to issue currency, but such currency was taxed out of existence. National banks were encouraged to buy U. S. bonds. Then they could deposit these bonds with the United States Treasurer (drawing interest on them, however) and upon the basis of that collateral could issue currency (upon the issuance of which they also obtained interest). Of course the whole people paid these double interest charges in the end.

The accumulation of wealth in the hands of the banks has placed in their control an engine of almost irresistible power. They are able to break down the credit of any business or of all businesses in the country, to destroy the buying power of the nation, and to lessen its producing power; and this engine is growing in size fast.

On January 1, 1914, twenty-three of the greatest banks in New York city had 4,833 employes and occupied 546,718 square feet of floor space. SLx years later the same banks had 18,607 employes and occupied 1,217,393 square feet of floor space.

Banking Profits .

UNDER present conditions a city bank can hardly fail to be a profitable undertaking if it is managed with even ordinary ability and prudence. In the year 1919 the average earnings of banks the country over was 24 percent on their capitalization. Indeed, the common people cannot but notice the difference between the 3 percent and 4 percent interest which the bank gives Lor the use of the money which the people have saved, and the 24 percent on their capitalization which the bank earns with that same money.

So sure are large profits in a well managed bank that a woman’s bank, started in Clarksville, Tennessee, October 6, 1919, without the men of the town's knowing anything of it beforehand, showed gross earnings of 25 percent in its first year of operation. All the nine directors in this bank are women.

During the year 1919 the capital of twenty-four of New York’s greatest banks was increased from $69,200,000 to $110,920,000, to help them to alworb their profits and reduce their taxes (every hundred thousand dollars increase in capitalization enables the bank to save excess profit tax <m $8,000 of its earnings). Twenty-one of the greatest banks in New York city, ■which dosed the year with capital totalling $123,500,000, made during the year net profits amounting to $50,394,000, or around 70 percent on the capital with which they beyttn the year's work. Subsidiary companies made millions of dollars not included in these figures.

In the capital stock of the national 1 tanks in the United States amounted to $1,137,995,000, and their deposits to $13,809,451,000. Tire statement has appeared in print that their earnings for 4919 were $1,009,000,000, but as the expression ’'‘earnings” is more or less vague, and as the amount named is in round figures, we do not know the value of the statement. If approximately correct it would indicate excessive profits in the national hanks and very meagre profits in the State and private banks to bring the general average to but 24 percent Federal Reserve Banks

THE Federal Reserve Banks were not organized to finance the World War, but if they had been organized for that purpose they could not have served their purpose better; for they centralize in the hands of seven men nearly the whole banking power of the nation. They constitute a series of central hanks.

These banks are in the nature of a "Trust’’ organized by the Government, to aid the member banks of the country to maintain an elastic credit and currency system and to steady credit. The purpose of their organization is to prevent —not to bring on—the business depressions which formerly happened with periodic frequency in the United States, throwing millions out of employment and causing great distress.

The Federal Reserve Bank is, in effect, a Government institution not supposed to be run for profit. There is no reason why it should have any capital at all, and every cent of profit it earns ought to be returned to the Government ; but it does have capital, and it does make money.

During the year 1919 the Federal Reserve Banks operated on a paid-in capital of $87,000,000 and earned on that capitalization $98,000,000. Up to July 30, 1920, the paid-in capital had become $95,225,000; the surplus was then $164,745,000 and the total resources exceeded the total liabilities by $3,264,457,000. The total resources are $6,250,000,000, with direct control over the $22,711,375,000 resources of all the national banks, liesides.

The earnings of the New York branch of the Federal Reserve Bank for the half year ending -June 30, amounted to $24,607,000 on a capitalization of $23,800,000, or at the rate of 208 percent for a full year. This is a pretty good profit for a bank that is not supposed to be run for profit. The bank is forbidden by law to pay more than 6 percent dividends to the hanks which constitute its only stockholders, surplus profits going to the U. S. Treasury. There is an uneasy feeling abroad that the Federal Reserve Bank has Ix-en Inred into “doing those things which it ought not to have done and leaving undone those things which it should have done”.

Depression of Bonds

IF ANT other agency than the Federal Reserve Bank had taken the steps to discourage the sale of Government bonds which that institution has taken, its officers could be haled before a magistrate, tried and sent to prison for a long term of years. (The administration just passing has been noted for the unusual length of its prison terms and for its lack of magnanimity toward the small offender)

The Federal Reserve system destroyed the credit of the Government's own bonds by raising the discount rates on them to 5J percent, . .which is an amc'.'..'.i greater than the interest return on the bends. The people who purchased these bonds found at once that they could not dispose of them except at a loss of 4 percent to 15 percent (Victory and Liberty issues), a total loss to patriotic bondholders estimated by Senator Owen, of Oklahoma, at approximately $3,000,000,000.

It should be remembered that when these Liberty bondholders bought these bonds the banks which handled them and the Government which issued them told the buyers that these were gilt-edged investments which would be likely to advance in price when the war was ended and that they would be the very best of collateral. Is a bond a gilt-edged investment which must be sold at a loss, if at all ?

As to using the Liberty bonds as collateral; first, the banks will lend but 60 percent of face value, if they lend at all; second, the Federal Reserve Board has been urging the banks to get rid of them, i. e., to make the people who subscribed for them finish their payments and take the bonds away or to sell the bonds and pay up the loans. A commendable motive ( the desire to compel the people to save money and to reduce the inflation of the currency) is set forth in extenuation of this.

It is’said with a good deal of satisfaction by some that the Government made $50,000,000 by going into the market and buying Liberty bonds after their value had been depressed; but there is a question if the Government might not better have exn^nde'd $50,000,000 to keep the bonds at par. Indeed, if the Federal Reserve Banks would at oiee loan 44 percent on these bonds they weald again sell at par.

It is surely inconsistent for the Government to redeem its own bonds at less than their face value. To do so is to repudiate partially the bonds, and it serves to indelibly impress upon the minds of the people the thought that neither the word of the banker that sold the bonds nor of the Government that issued them was trustworthy. By consenting to an arrangement of this kind the Government has placed itself in a position where it would now have great difficulty in floating a popular loan, and it surely would not wish to resort to any more strenuous methods for marketing bonds than it used whiles Mr. McAdoo was Secretary of the Treasury.

Boosting of Interest

THE raising of the discount rates on Liberty bonds to more than their legal rate of interest was the signal and the excuse for a general raising of interest rates all over the country. Yet the Federal Reserve system was particularly designed to prevent anything of this kind happening.

With the Government interest rates on bonds what they are, and with the depositor in a savings account receiving what he receives, andr especially with the banks earning 24 percent and upward on the money they have invested, there is surely no just reason for bankers to demand over 6 percent interest; and indeed some bankers have refused to do so. All honor to them.

Under the National Bank Act United States banks are forbidden to charge rates of interest in excess of those permitted by law of state in _ which they are located, and in New York State the legal rate of interest is 6 percent. But Congress has passed a law which enables the Federal Reserve Banks to charge rates to member banks in excess of 7 percent. So here we liave the people forbidden to take usury on the one hand, with institutions of the Government permitted to take it whenever they desire.

During a large part of 1920 the Federal Reserve rate for commercial paper in cities other than New York was fixed at 7 percent, or 1 percent more than the legal New York rate. This meant that the borrower must pay 7$ percent to 8 percent in the open market; and, as a matter of fact, commercial paper was freely quoted in New York city at the usurious rate of 8 percent. This has forced the railroads to pay 7 percent to 8 percent for their loans, the pressure coming back eventually on the passenger and shipper.

No- doubt one motive back of the Federal Reserve Banks in boosting the interest rates was to discourage speculation; but their act has not had much effect in that direction, though it has greatly depressed legitimate business.

The forcing up of interest rates will make a huge eut in the revenues of the nation; for without flourishing business eonditionsthereis bound to be a reduction in income surtaxes and excess profit taxes. Moreover, the indirect effect of such a boost in rates of interest is to reduce the value of every life insurance policy and every savings bank account.

Profiteering by the Federal Reserve Banks set the fashion for other banks, or perhaps was encouraged by them. In any event, in the month of August the Comptroller of the Currency stated that the national banks of New York city were making excessive profits by undue charges on short time loans. These excessive profits were estimated at $180,000 per day, some banks charging the borrowers as high an annual rate ■ as 20 percent interest More pawnbroking.

Restriction of Credit

THE underlying cause of economic distress in war time, and for some time after, is the scarcity of goods, other than war munitions, and the demoralization of production. Prices are high because there is not enough to go around, and the highest bidder gets the goods. Wages are high, and everything that wages will iy is high.

As a consequence of these high wages and the acident high cost of materials it is necessary for manufacturers and farmers to have more credit than in normal times. The natural path follower prices is through increased production, and nqt through a slashing of wages and restriction' of credit. No doubt the high cost of living can be temporarily reduced by a method which will force upon the market what little reserve stock the country has, but to do so is like killing th< goose that lays the golden eggs.

No patriotic statesmen or banker ought to desire to halt prosperity and bring about the suffering and discontent that inevitably follow; yet the Federal Reserve Bank seemed to conclude that this was the best way to reduce living expenses in a campaign year when expenses must, perforce, be reduced.

Under the influence of the Federal Reserve Board, early in 1920, bankers were gradually crowded into a position where they would lend no money for the expansion of production, regardless of security offered. And it is as true of the farming business as of any business that it cannot increase its output if it cannot get the increased capital necessary to function. How then can the cost of living be permanently reduced I

The crops in the great Middle West in 1920 were wonderful in size and condition, but money was almost impossible to obtain. Many bankers regularly call the loans of farmers early, compelling them to sell immediately after the harvest, when the prices are the lowest for the year. Farmers who had enormous crops and wanted to buy threshing machines to turn wheat into money were unable to get even sixtyday accommodations through the banks.

Moreover, with the greatest shortage of homes in history it was next to impossible for a home-builder to make any arrangements with a local bank. If a bank loaned to a home-builder at 6 percent, the Federal Reserve Banks could make the rediscount rate against the loan 7 percent or 8 percent or 9 percent, so that the home bank would become a loser by the transaction; and the bank having become a loser once, what would be the chance of the next home builder’s getting a loan at 6 percent?

Curtailing credits is the sure way to curtail business, and the Manufacturer's Record,’ of Baltimore, than which there is not a more truly patriotic paper in America, made the statement in its issue of June 3,1920, that

“The Federal Reserve Board has already cost this country in depreciation of securities and the halting of business not merely hundreds of millions of dollars, but billions of dollars. It has endangered the whole business structure.”

Methods of Securing Members

THE Federal Reserve Banks would like to have all the banks in the country become members of the system. We do not just know the reason for this, except that it seems a failing of our times that people who already have too much power are never satisfied until they get a little more.

Representative Reavis, of Nebraska, claims that the operation of the Federal Reserve Bank system in Nebraska has brought several small banks of that state to the verge of destruction. Many such banks, which were functioning legitimately in helping the farmers, have failed. He explains that in order to scare small banks into the system, agents of the Federal Reserve have taken as much as $35,000 in checks to a small country bank, in a high-powered automobile, and demanded currency payment of the whole amount at one time, at the point of a revolver. Correspondence schools should get out a course in modern finance; it would read like a blood-and-thunder detective story.

In the month of May representatives of the country banks of twenty-four states complained to Congress that unless something were done to curb the power of the seven men that controlled the Federal Reserve system the banks would be ruined. They are also clamoring for a revision of the Federal Reserve Bank act, claiming that the chief beneficiaries of the system are the wholesalers and jobbers in the larger cities. Nearly a hundred years ago the abuses of the central banking functions by the Bank of the United States caused President Andrew Jackson to terminate the career of that institution.

When a bank loans to customers it does not pay out actual money; it merely grants a credit But real interest is charged upon these credits, and they must be paid back in real money, or the property of the borrower is taken. Thus the interest-bearing debts of the people are pyramided, without increasing the money with which the debts can be paid.

Workers* Credit Unions

THERE are 65,000 farmers’ and laborers’ banks in Europe. These credit unions, as they has been abandoned.

are called, are not aimed to make money for the stockholders, but are run for the sole benefit of borrowers and depositors. They now have a membership of 15,000,000, with annual deposits . and loans amounting to $7,000,000,000.

It is believed that these credit unions have a great fiitiire fti America, as more and more banks depart from their proper office of helping operation in Massachusetts, Rhode Island, New York, North Carolina, South Carolina, Wisconsin, Texas, Utah and Oregon. Loans ■ are made on the personal character and integrity of the borrowers. The shareholders in these banks are usually all known to each other, and each shareholder has the same voting power regardless of the number of shares held.

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