An agricultural expert who was well acquainted with the conditions of silk manufacture and of the district and was in a disinterested position told me after my visit to this factory how the foremen scoured the country for girl labour during January and February. The success of the _kemban_ or girl collector was due to the poverty of the people, who were glad "to be relieved of the cost of a daughter's food." Occasionally the _kemban_ had sub-agents. The mill proprietors were in competition for skilled girls, and money was given by a _kemban_ intent on stealing another factory's hand. The novices had no contract. The contract of a skilled girl provided that she should serve at the factory for a specified period and that if she failed to do so, she should pay back twenty times the 5 yen or whatever sum had been advanced to her. Obviously 100 yen would be a prohibitive sum for a peasant's daughter to find. The amount of the workers' pay was not specified in the contract. The document was plainly one-sided and would be regarded in an English court as against public policy and unenforceable. Married women might take an infant with them to the factory. In more than one factory I saw several thin-faced babies. The effect of factory life on girls, a man who knew the countryside well told me, was "not good." The girls had weakened constitutions as the result of their factory life and when they married had fewer than the normal number of children. The general result of factory life was degeneration. The girls "corrupted their villages." The custom was, I understood, that the girls were kept on the factory premises except when they could allege urgent business in town. But they were allowed out on the three nights of the _Bon_ festival. It was rare that priests visited the factories and there were no shrines there. The girls had sometimes "lessons" given them and occasionally story-tellers or gramophone owners amused them. The food supplied by some factories was not at all adequate and the girls had to spend their money at the factory tuck-shops. "Most proprietors," I was told, "endeavour to make part of their staff permanent by acting as middlemen to arrange marriages between female and male workers." The infants of married workers were "looked after by the youngest apprentices." In another place I saw over a factory which employed about 160 girls, who were worked from 5:30 a.m. to 6:40 p.m. with twenty minutes for each meal. If a girl "broke her contract" it was the custom to send her name to other factories so that she could not get work again. The foremen at this establishment seemed decent men.