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JAPAN BY THE JAPANESE

Yield of Tobacco Revenue under the old System.

	Amount of Revenues.
Year.	Licences.	Stamp Duties.	Total.
	Yen.	Yen.	Yen.
1894	378,617.500	2,302,042.806	2,680,660.308
1895	389,197.500	2,345,874.544	2,735,072.044
1896	207,292.500	2,770,431.659	2,977,724.159

Number of Cultivators, Areas of Cultivated Fields, and Quantities of Harvest.

Year.	Number of Cultivators.	Areas of Fields.	Quantities of Harvest.
		Cho.	Kwan.
1894	—	35,393	19,451,304
1895	—	38,135	18,673,911
1896	897,859	21,865	18,667,763
1897	846,774	26,465	19,629,886
1898	349,506	26,276	18,278,151
1899	573,485	42,161	13,311,821
1900	420,693	37,442	12,984,795
1901	244,024	23,024	17,906,608

VIII. The Government Steel Works

By the Director-General of the Steel Works

The importance of inaugurating the iron industry in this country on modern principles, both in regard to military and to industrial requirements, was early perceived by the Government, which once attempted to undertake that task by the establishment of a model iron and steel works at Kamaishi. This attempt ended, however, in failure, as did the attempt to induce private enterprise to take the matter up by the offer of a Government subsidy; and the project was accordingly allowed to remain in abeyance, when the Government decided to make a second attempt to establish the necessary works itself.

With this object in view, it submitted to the Diet in 1890 and 1891 estimates of the necessary expenditures, but on both these occasions the proposal of the Government was rejected by the members of the Diet on the ground that the information furnished by the Government with regard to the Works had not been sufficiently explicit in respect of the amount of raw material available in Japan.

The members of the House of Peers insisted, however, on the necessity of furthering the investigation, and in pursuance of their proposal a Committee was nominated by the Government,