The general educational policy of the government is not to be regarded as a philanthropic or ameliorative effort to meet the conditions already described. This policy however does have a powerful elevating influence on the lives and character of the entire people. As we have seen, over ninety-seven per cent. of the girls of school age are in attendance, according to the reports. Though we allow a discount on these figures (and some may perhaps be necessary), we can still say that, if the present policy of six years of compulsory education is carried out, the rising generation of boys and girls will be able to read fairly well the daily paper and simple books. To millions of women this means the opening of doors of knowledge and opportunity which in ages past have been closed to them. The government has also been the chief initiative force in all recent movements to improve the economic and industrial conditions of the people. Railroads in Japan owe their existence to the government, as also do many forms of modern industry. Agriculture and fruit and stock raising owe much to the government, which has imported Western seed, Western fruit trees, and new breeds of horses and cattle. All these efforts have done much to improve the economic conditions, thus elevating the scale of living. People eat better food and more of it, live in better houses, and wear better clothes than they did fifty or more years ago, and--an important item--they pay less taxes in proportion to their income. A general uplifting process is modifying their life and thought, and this is profoundly affecting Japan's working classes, and, of course, her women. In regard to the specific evils introduced by Western industrialism, we have already seen how the government has sought to remedy the difficulties, so far as laws can go, but hitherto its efforts have largely been thwarted by capitalists. Among the notable efforts of the government to promote wise social reform movements have been the large gatherings, at considerable government expense, of leaders of philanthropic and benevolent institutions for instruction in the most recent and approved sociological principles. Competent specialists from all over the country have been employed to instruct these leaders, and thus the whole country is given the benefit of the special knowledge of the few. The government has also, during the past four years, distributed some forty thousand yen annually among those eleemosynary institutions which it regards as models of efficiency.