In the September, 1910, number of the _Shin Koron_, a monthly magazine published in Tokyo, is an article by Professor Kuwada (of the Tokyo Imperial University) entitled "The Pitiful Environment of Factory Girls." He gives a detailed statement of the conditions of factory workers, in which he estimates the number of female laborers in factories containing ten or more hands at 700,000, of whom ten per cent. are under fourteen years of age. In tobacco factories ten per cent., in match factories twenty per cent, and in glass factories thirty per cent. of the girls are under ten years of age. He vigorously condemns the situation as threatening the future of the working class, whose prospective mothers are thus being destroyed. The efforts of the government during recent years to enact factory laws have been successfully thwarted thus far, says Professor Kuwada, by shortsighted, selfish capitalists. The girls are brought in from their country homes by false promises. They are told of the beautiful sights to be seen, theaters to be visited, the regular Sunday rest, and even of the splendid care and education they will receive from the factory. There is also stealing of expert workers from one factory by the artful stratagems of another. There are factories which resort to devices for defrauding helpless operatives. In one town where there are many factories, it is customary to work overtime by setting back the hands of the clock. To conceal this from the operatives, no factory blows its whistles! Some factories do not give time for the girls to rest even while they eat, but require them to work with the right hand while they eat with the left. Night work in which both male and female operatives are engaged together is most demoralizing. Punishment of various kinds is administered. In addition to fines, in some places the girls are imprisoned in dark rooms, rations are reduced, their arms are bound and the lash applied freely, and in extreme cases they are stripped to the waist and marched through the factory among young men and girls, bearing a red flag tied to the back! Superintendents are invariably men.