Increase in Petty Theft and Beggary to Make Both Ends Meet OvR Own ConnssPonDEnT.
Tokyo, Dec. 1.
Japan is facing an unemployment problem of such dimenstonis that the authorities are racking their brains how best to tackle i. Retrénchment is the order of the day, business is in the depths of depression and: the number of educated, black-conted poor is growing rapidly.
Crime is on the increase; hold-
Javerage man and woman, Signs are not wanting to prove this.
Only last week I was talking with:
prominent Japanese newspaper man and the conversation turned om hard times. His remarks, which are an index to what many of the younger set are to-day thinking, were, of a type for which he would be instantly gaded. "The idea," he said, "of the Imperial Palaces occupying about a half of this jolty! If I wanted to go to Tkebukuro—a suburb of Tokyo—it takes me 50 minutes by electric car, simply because the line runs all round the city. If the line were laid down straight, it would occupy a third of that time, But the Imperial Palace is in the way, and 0 time. and money have to be wasted the tracks all round the ups, of the Western variety, which were conspicuously absent formerly, now occur almost weekly... The Japanese, whatever he or she may be commercially und officially, es individually a very honest individual. The hard urge of stern economics, however, is driving wway this old-time trait of excellence; living has become a hard struggle; while the family system, which formerly looked after the more impecunious ones, has not to-day the strength and' willingness to shoulder buiedons as of yore.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.