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to health. The labour is apportioned in two ways: (1) for the Government, and (2) for private individuals or bodies of individuals. In the former case the capital invested is supplied from the fund set aside for prison expenditure, and materials, tools, implements, etc., are purchased from this fund. But in the latter case the trades are controlled as a private business by individuals, companies, or partnerships, who either obtain the necessary supply of labour from the prisons direct, or engage the employed prisoners at reasonable wages on application. Capital and materials are, of course, supplied by employers in each instance.
The Government work consists of the manufacture of articles required by the prisons themselves and other Government departments, also of mining and engineering connected with those offices. The principal branches of industry are as follows: Loom-working, carpentry, joinery, needlework, smith-craft, straw-work, brick-making, coal-mining, paper-making, and construction and repairs of buildings. Brick-working, among other industries, fully answers all demands of the Government departments.
Where the supply of labour is obtained from the prisons by private employers the work is usually of the following nature: the manufacture of silk-stuff, soles of Japanese socks, cotton-flannel, mats, Japanese socks, bricks, matches, Japanese cloisonné, uchiwa (a Japanese fan, round and not to be folded); quarrying and work in cot on-mills.
Originally all prison expenses in Japan were defrayed from the Central Government Treasury; but in 1880 the support of local prisons established for the incarceration of those undergoing confinement or other lower punishment, and the custody of all other accused persons, was transferred from the Treasury to municipal and local purses, owing to the abolition of paper currency and the general report of financial administration. This change did not, however, affect the salaries of prison officials or prison expenses in Hokkaido, Okinawa-ken, and the island of Ogasawara, where local taxation was not yet levied; nor did the change affect the expenses of central prisons established for imprisoning male criminals condemned to penal servitude or transportation under the existing code, or to imprisonment for life under the old law—all these depending on the National Treasury for their existence. Later, with the progress of civilization, the sum of local expenditure has been gradually increased in the interests of education, engineering works, and the encouragement of agriculture and industries of various sorts. In these circumstances it is not surprising that an adequate sum of money was not available for the maintenance of the prisons, and the result of this unsatis-