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They ought to be disciplined in their course of life, to be trained in technical arts and sciences, and to be organized in various business pursuits. For this we have established many commercial and industrial schools of various grades throughout the country, and are sending out students to foreign countries. Foreign competition, by which I mean the competition of the Japanese in domestic and foreign markets, will stimulate our business education more than anything else. Japan is quite young in her commercial career. She has almost unbounded resources in mining, fishing, forestry, and of agriculture in Hokkaido and the territory of Formosa. Moreover, she will make a splendid basis for establishing factories of various goods, not only for domestic consumption, but for export to China and other Eastern markets, as she has cheap coal, cheap labour, and facilities for transportation. This is demonstrated in the growth of the spinning factories during the last ten years. I hope more and more Europeans and Americans will come to this country and avail themselves of these opportunities, so that their example may stimulate our business education, and give us power to compete with them on an equal footing.

Those who are not guided by reliable information are very apt to be led astray in their survey and judgment of Japan’s financial strength. When so-called bank failures, accompanied with a run on the existing banks, are observed, the cry of a financial crisis seems to be based on facts. But a careful observer, who has some knowledge of this country’s financial conditions, will not be easily deceived by the cry raised by superficial observers and pessimistic alarmists. They know that such occurrences are only temporary and short-lived. They are nothing but a natural result of the sudden expansion of Japan’s industry and commerce consequent upon the economic condition of things brought about after the close of the last war. Financial stringency may be likened to a periodic attack of sickness occurring especially when the body is in a state of rapid and vigorous growth, so that the above phenomena, alarming as they may appear to superficial observers, serve to prove to the serious students of Japan’s finances that they are the signs of future growth instead of being the symptoms of an alarming decay. Just