Self-reliance is half brother of independence. I have found that with these improvements has grown up not a little talk of “China for the Chinese”. One finds constant complaints in the native Chinese press that lucrative contracts, such as the erection of government buildings, are given to Japanese and other foreign contractors instead of local firms. The signs, taken altogether, are hopeful, and West and East have enough to interchange without overlapping each other. Nice adjustments will have to be made in some cases, but tact, patience, mutual sympathy and altruism will in the end overcome any misunderstandings that may arise. XIII THE INFLUENCE OF JAPAN In 1911 Japan’s tariff agreements expired and a new high tariff was put into effect in the effort to raise $300,000,000 a year as the state’s revenue. The same result was experienced as in India. Home manufacturers operated in the smaller industries, and many larger foreign capitalists opened Japanese branches. For instance, the Lever Soap Company, of England, came to Osaka, and the Armstrong-Vickers-Maxim Company, of Newcastle, the gun-founders and warship builders, came to Muroran in Ezo Island, to be near the coal mines, the iron ore being imported largely from Tayeh, China, and much of the pig iron from Hanyang, China. Prices of living have advanced beyond wages, and in 1912 the municipalities of Tokio, etc., had to open free rice kitchens to feed crowds of the impoverished and unemployed. The poor bear the heaviest share of the new taxes and the increased prices levied by the trusts. The profits of some of the large trusts go out of the country. There is the same complaint as in China, that foreign capital and home monopoly are exploiting franchises, subsidy chests and tariffs. The new high tariff is a success for the monopolists, just as the American tariff was from 1865 to 1911. The complaint among the people of the privilege-made-wealth running the government and burdening the taxpayer is as bitter as in some other countries. The suffrage being limited in Japan to five millions out of sixty million people, this discontent does not yet show itself so quickly as in America and Britain. American and British newspapers, magazines and books which voice reform, and real and not deputized representation of the taxed, are translated, and widely read, not only in Japan, but in China.