The Goverment is facing more snags in the working of its, atroc fous 100 percent tariff law.
The law was promulgated soon after the passing of the United States" Immigration Law, and this fact led many to the conclusion that this piece of legislation was in the nature of a reprisal to the American legislation which is so obnoxious to the Tapanese. But why other lands have been hit with the same big stick has never yet been explained, while i: still remains to be seen whether-high tariffs will inculcate the virtues of thrift and promote domestic manufacture of the foreign arides to be ultimately shut out.
'The cold truth is that' the demand for foreign articles, cannot be made properly by the Japanese, continues, apace, despite a 100 per cent. rise In. making the sudden rise in prices, the Japanese Government, it would seem, failed to reckon fully with its host—the leonsuming public.
The belief that the Luxury Act would tend to bring about a simpler form of living; would turn men and. women away from jam and cheese: to rice and pickled horse-radish; from tweeds and silks to cotton and Jcoarser articles of dress; from gold watches to solider gun-metal, has proved a chimera, so far, just as attempts to inculcate morality by means of legislative strictures have failed in the past.
The Japanese people, as a whole, while very obedient to authority and leven subservient to it occasionally, permit this to go only thus far and no further. The authorities, in the Jopinion of some, have gone "further," and this section of the public, while continuing to remain within the law, works diagonally to the expectations of the 100 per cent. tariff enthusiasts
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.