Occidental, in pointing the way to mutual understanding and satisfactory action. Later he became a most excellent teacher in the Osaka High School, but from the first the bent of his mind was towards figures and statistics.

Nevertheless after long exile from his native land, in California, he was not on firm ground when attempting to calculate with the soroban-that abacus, or counting board, which we see in every Chinese laundry. This box of knobs or buttons, sliding vertically on bamboo pins, dominates the mathematical situation from Moscow to Tokio. By means of it one can add, subtract, multiply, divide, work decimals and common fractions, find the square or extract the cube root, and do this far more quickly than the average Western clerk or cash girl.

Nine-tenths of the untaxed and pensioned Samurai or gentry, in silk and with swords, scorned this instrument. They were rather proud of their aristocratic distaste and ignorance of figures. That is the reason why we in Tokio expected to hear of the speedy assassination of Baron Shibusawa, now in Washington, for uplifting the merchants' social status, and, in his public manifesto demanding reform and change from petty bookkeeping, of stocking dimensions, to modern ledgers, and a national budget. He, like my pupil for three years, Count Komura, who signed the Portsmouth treaty, knew his soroban well.

I well remember when Dr. Murray challenged Takahashi's accuracy, in an estimate demanding proof on the abacus. This, at the moment, confused the lad, as well as the machine. But in time the perseverance which Takahashi manifested argued well. His triumphs, with both brain and fingers, proved the earnest of his ability manifested in the raising and handling of millions during the Manchu and Muscovite wars. When the clash with Russia was inevitable, Takahashi's thorough knowledge of the American people proved a tower of strength to the nation. That an army of public school boys and university graduates, using with superior intelligence the latest refinements of ballistics and strategy, would overcome in a fair field, was a foregone conclusion to those who knew.

Four years of intimate acquaintance with Takahashi proved what an experience of over fifty years with Japanese in every

social station has demonstrated to me-the fact that the Japanese have a genius for friendship. I had not seen Takahashi for thirty years when I called on him in New York, and he, seeing me first, came forward with name uttered and extended hand in greeting.

As Finance Minister in both the previous administrations and in that of his old neighbor and friend Kei Hara-the Commoners' Cabinet-Takahashi heartily supported the policy of his chief. He was earnest in mediating at home between the militaristic powers that be, by tradition, evidence and reality, and those ever increasing elements that are Christian, commercial and patriotic. The latter embody the hopes which spring from industry and toil, from the women, from the educated classes, and from the better ethical and cultural life and institutions. These all unite in striving to win fame and honor for Japan, not as a bully but as a friend to both East and West.

With Hara, who was less of a student, academically, than his fellow-northerner, I had not so much intimate personal acquaintance as with Takahashi; for Hara was in the lower classes when I was in Japan, and his foreign culture was rather in French than in English; though as a correspondent I found him frank and responsive, simple in that friendship which I have enjoyed with his countrymen.

Hara early turned away from the reading of books to that of men. Even the study of law, which he attempted for a while, was abandoned for that of journalism. This gave opportunity for many interviews with prominent men, whom he studied at close range. In this way and as the private secretary, in succession, to several Premiers, he gained that power of reading, appraising and handling men and measures that made his own administration as Premier so marvelous a success. It is only those who know the social and historic background of Japan who can rightly appraise that success, or love him because of the enemies he made even to the cowardly murderer who illustrated the sinister side of Bushido. Let us remember that the Constitution of 1889 ordains the "fixed expenditures"; that is, about seven-eighths of the government's outlay, which the Diet cannot touch. This arbitrary provision keeps the Elder Statesmen, the military class and

the bureaucracy terrorizing the country. So, also, the Ministers of War and the Navy are kept in office in the cabinet and are irremovable, whatever the Diet or the national electorate may vote. This means that the names of political parties in Japan are meaningless in the American or British sense and that militarism, on the Prussian model, is entrenched in power. The ministers are responsible not to the Diet, but to "the Emperor"—which term, in politics, is but a paraphrase for the exertion of the power behind the throne. Yet despite all these obstacles, seen and unseen, what Hara accomplished in his three years of power-holding was the increase of the real authority of the legislative arm of the government. In most of his measures, he secured the virtual responsibility of the ministers to the Diet and not to the throne.

What is by no means to be despised is the improvement in the status of the merchant and working classes. In this, Hara is not to be judged fairly from the criticisms of his political opponents. Possibly an alien may see more clearly and appraise more justly. When one remembers the almost total want of any commoners' rights which the two-sworded men of old were bound to respect, and the grovelling attitude of all the lower classes before their armed superiors, the triumph of this Premier, the initial commoner and the first northern man to serve in this high office, seems almost startling. In the very week of Hara's elevation to the Premiership, as he announced to the writer in a personal letter, he gave orders to the Japanese school teachers in Korea to take off their military uniforms and the swords which they wore in the schoolroom. At home also he promulgated the rule that military

dress should be worn only by the men of the army and navy in

active service.

In brief, I have faith that the future will show clearly that the administration of Takashi Hara was one of notable constitutional advance, when militaristic and bureaucratic government began to weaken, and true party government started on its beneficent career; and the pledged word of Korekiyo Takahashi gives assurance that the hopes and ideals of the martyred Premier will be followed by his friend and successor.

WILLIAM ELLIOT GRIFFIS.

in the drawing office of the same factory found that the men in the shops were earning more than he. Thus the weak Association of Engineering and Shipbuilding Draughtsmen, which already existed before the war, gained rapidly in strength until it included the great majority of the skilled men in the occupation. The foremen, confronted with a more determined resistance on the part of their employers, found it more difficult to form a stable association of their own; but numerous local societies of foremen were created, and these gradually drew together into three larger bodies, the National Foremen's Association, the Amalgamated Managers' and Foremen's Association, and the Scottish Foremen's Protective Association.

At the same time, the tendency to combination was manifesting itself very greatly among Civil Servants, who, like the nonmanual workers in private employment, had to struggle hard in order to secure advances, even for the lowest paid grades, at all equivalent to the rise in the cost of living. They secured at length the creation by the Government of the Civil Service Conciliation and Arbitration Board; and the necessity of laying cases before this body undoubtedly helped to stimulate combination throughout the service. This movement towards Civil Service Trade Unionism was greatly strengthened towards the end of the war period, when the Government was at last induced, much against its will, to agree that the Whitley scheme of Joint Industrial Councils should be applied to the Civil Service and to other employees of the Government. It became necessary, under the Whitley scheme, for the Civil Service to constitute, both for the service as a whole and in each department, bodies fully representative of the staff; and the natural result of this was a big growth of combination which made most of the Civil Service grades practically a hundred per cent organized.

It was not only after the actual conclusion of hostilities that the movement towards combination began to spread at all widely among non-manual workers in private employment; but during the years from 1919 to 1920 hardly a week passed without the formation of some new association attempting to organize a group of workers for whom there had previously been no special provision. At the same time the membership of the existing associa

tions grew rapidly, although it was still by no means as inclusive as in the case of the Civil Service or the teachers.

At the same time, organization was spreading among the technicians in industry. The Electrical Power Engineers' Association, the Society of Technical Engineers, the Architects' and Surveyors' Assistants' Professional Unions, and similar bodies, were formed and grew rapidly in strength. The Actors' Association converted itself into a Trade Union; and both it and the Variety Artists' Federation greatly increased in membership.

Where these associations, and especially those of supervisory and technical workers, came into close contact with large organized bodies of employers, it became at once manifest that these employers were most unwilling to accept the accomplished fact of organization among their salaried staffs. It was, according to the theory of the employers, permissible perhaps for wage earners to form unions and to demand the right of collective bargaining; but the relation between the employer and his salaried staff, it was urged, was and must remain a personal relation inconsistent with collective action and still more with any common action between the organized salaried workers and the ordinary wage earners. Consequently, the demands of the new associations for recognition were in almost all cases refused by the employers; and the association had to get on as best they might unrecognized by the employers, and therefore unable to negotiate, on behalf of their members, collective agreements with the big employers' associations and federations.

It is no longer possible for the associations of non-manual workers to rely for the settlement of their grievances on the method of arbitration, or on securing the intervention of a Government Department. As a number of recent cases have shown, the Ministry of Labor is now very little inclined to intervene when a dispute breaks out between a body of salaried workers and their employer or group of employers. Consequently, the non-manual workers' associations find themselves in a position closely resembling that which the manual workers' Trade Unions occupied at the earlier stages in their development. They are working for recognition; but they have no means of securing recognition except the power of their own organization.