Japan -- Social life and customs; Women -- Employment -- Japan; Women -- Japan
As the months passed by it gradually became clear that the effectiveness
as well as the permanence of the work demanded suitable quarters. The
heavy rental paid for the house made self-support impossible. Results
already attained seemed to warrant appeal to friends for gifts, for the
purpose of buying land and the erection of a building. Responses to our
appeals provided the needed funds, land was purchased and a contract
made with a carpenter on exceptionally favorable terms, just two days
before the opening of the Russo-Japanese war (February, 1904).
Immediately prices went up by leaps and bounds; but our contract was so
well made and the carpenter had already made such full subcontracts for
the lumber, etc., that we were not troubled because of war prices.
As we entered our new quarters in June, 1904, however, the factory shut
down the main part of its work and discharged the majority of its
workers. This was a severe blow to the Home. The occupants were reduced
to seven girls. Although the factory opened again after a few months,
the conditions during and after the war made it difficult for the
factory to secure girls, and the Home, together with the other
boarding-houses, suffered from lack of boarders. Beginning with March,
1907, however, special circumstances combined to fill the Home to its
utmost capacity; during the three months of April, May, and June thirty
applicants were refused admittance and as many more who desired to enter
the school were declined.
Increasing acquaintance with the disastrous effects of factory
labor,--the lint-filled air so often producing consumption, and the
excessive heat of summer sometimes resulting even in sunstroke,--made
Mr. Omoto unwilling to persuade girls to enter upon such a life. The
needs of the Home also pressed upon his time. These considerations led
him, in 1906, to give up his work in the factory altogether, in order to
devote his entire time and strength to the Home and to the upbuilding of
the moral and religious life of the girls.
In July, 1906, Mr. Omoto attended in Osaka the first convention of
factory officials convened to study the problem of the proper care of
operatives. Representatives were present from sixteen factories having
night schools, and specimens of the work of the girls were compared. Mr.
Omoto was fairly lionized because of the superior quality of the work
sent in from our Home and many newspapers made special mention of him
and his work.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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