I found in one mountainous county that only about a sixth of the area was under cultivation. A responsible man said: "This is a county of the biggest landlords and the smallest tenants. Too many landowners are thinking of themselves, so there arise sometimes severe conflicts. Some 4,000 tenants have gone to Hokkaido." The conversation got round to the young men's societies and I was told a story of how an Eta village threatened by floods had been saved by the young men of the neighbouring non-Eta village working all night at a weakened embankment. Some days later an Eta deputation came to the village and "with tears in their eyes gave thanks for what had been done." The comment of a Japanese friend was: "In the present state of Japan hypocrisy may be valuable. The boys and the Eta were at least exercising themselves in virtue." Four villages in this county have among them eight fish nurseries, the area of salt water enclosed being roughly 120 acres. I looked into several cottages where paper making was going on.[180] I also went into two cotton mills. In both there were girls who were not more than eleven or twelve. "They are exempted from school by national regulation because of the poverty of their parents,"[181] I was told. As we passed the open shop fronts of the village barbers I saw that as often as not a woman was shaving the customer or using the patent clippers on him. We looked at a big dam which an enterprising landowner was constructing. Three hundred women were consolidating the earthwork by means of round, flat blocks of granite about twice the size of a curling stone. Round each block was a groove in which was a leather belt with a number of rings threaded on it. To each ring a rope was attached. When these ropes were extended the granite block became the hub of a wheel of which the ropes were the spokes. A number of women and girls took ropes apiece and jerked them simultaneously, whereupon the granite block rose in the air to the level of the rope pullers' heads. It was then allowed to fall with a thud. After each thud the pullers moved along a foot so that the block should drop on a fresh spot. The gangs hauling at the rammers worked to the tune of a plaintive ditty which went slowly so as to give them plenty of breathing time. It was something like this: Weep not, Do not lament, This world is as the wheel of a car. If we live long, We may meet again on the road.