The cotton looms are located in stone buildings erected on Manchester models, and employ many thousands of hands. The following Custom-house statistics will give an excellent idea of the progress of this industry: ─────────────────┬─────────────────┬─────────────────────────────────── │ Importation of │ Spun Cotton. │ Raw Cotton into │ │ Japan. │ ─────────────────┼─────────────────┼─────────────────┬───────────────── 〃 │ 〃 │Exportation from │Importation into │ │ Japan. │ Japan. ─────────────────┼─────────────────┼─────────────────┼───────────────── │ _Tons._ │ _Tons._ │ _Tons._ 1894 │ 64,071│ 2,067│ 9,350 1895 │ 84,739│ 2,362│ 8,661 1896 │ 99,108│ 7,677│ 11,810 1897 (10 months) │ 117,710│ 20,274│ 7,185 ─────────────────┴─────────────────┴─────────────────┴───────────────── From the above it will be remarked that Japan, in a relatively very short time, from being almost exclusively an importer of cotton goods, now exports them to foreign markets, and with good results. The Custom-house declared in 1898 £1,109,600 worth of cotton, or 20,269 tons of exports, and £734,400, or 7,185 tons of imports. The statistics of the Japanese Cotton Spinners’ Union record the following figures: ───────────┬───────────┬───────────┬───────────┬───────────┬─────────── │ Mills. │ No. of │ Workmen. │Workwomen. │Production │ │ Looms. │ │ │ of Spun │ │ │ │ │ Cotton. ───────────┼───────────┼───────────┼───────────┼───────────┼─────────── │ │ │ │ │ _Tons._ 31 Dec.,│ 30│ 227,895│ 4,089│ 10,330│ 18,798 1890│ │ │ │ │ 31 Dec.,│ 47│ 580,945│ 9,650│ 31,140│ 68,106 1895│ │ │ │ │ 31 Dec.,│ 61│ 839,387│ 13,447│ 43,367│ 97,435 1897│ │ │ │ │ 31 Oct.,│ 61│ 1,233,661│ 13,447│ 43,367│ 97,829 1898│ │ │ │ │ ───────────┴───────────┴───────────┴───────────┴───────────┴───────────