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view to improving the quality of manufactured articles, the position and structure of workshops, the control of boilers, and the employment and management of operatives and apprentices, together with their education, health, relief, etc.

Various acts have been put into operation during a period of some fifteen years, aimed at the formulation of measures or methods which might effectively prevent adulteration or debasement of national products, either raw or manufactured, and after some good and some useless experimental efforts the guild system has lately been pronounced the most effective, these organizations coming under such heads as Credit Guilds, Purchase Guilds, Sales and Protection Guilds, etc., with powers, as corporate bodies, to adopt measures aimed at furthering the business and economy of members. Rules have also been issued for the establishment of local and communal industrial experimental laboratories, or manufacturing training-schools, the objects being the encouragement and improvement of manufacture.

In 1900 the technical schools of all grades throughout the country numbered no less than 1,008, all devoted to the furthering of efficiency in manufacturing enterprise, and to adding to the technical knowledge of the people. The progress along these lines has been directed largely toward making the country independent of the assistance of foreign experts, and the success achieved is proved by the comparatively small number of European and American foremen and instructors now remaining in important or minor posts.

State aid to the extent of about £15,000 per annum is granted toward the work of providing technical teachers of Japanese birth, the principal subjects treated being, dyeing and weaving, metal and wood work, painting, designing, carving, ceramics, casting, pottery, shipbuilding, paper-making, printing, embroidery, sewing, commerce, brewing, sericulture, lacquer-work, etc.

The apprentice system has been rapidly falling into disfavour since the introduction of Western methods, and, although formerly prevailing universally in all branches of technical and manufacturing work, may now be said to exist in any semblance of its former status only in such ancient lines of business as hand-weaving, pottery, and dyeing. Some of the larger industries, such as shipbuilding, still maintain a system by which master-mechanics take under them a number of boys whom they employ at the factories or shops at which they are stationed, but the consensus of opinion is that the system is doomed, to be succeeded by regular modes of education.

In the matter of mine employés, the conditions differ from those of factory workers, because of the enormous proportion