This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1914 Excerpt: ... all goods woven in Japan, there must be over half the hand looms on cotton, or at least 350,000 out of the total in 1911 of 638,412. The power looms, of which at the end of 1911 there were only 20,431, work with a small amount of stoppage, while most of the hand looms are tended be housewives who have other duties. The production from the power looms is some 50 yards of cloth a day, while the hand looms probably do not average over 4 yards (a full day's production on the hand loom runs from 4 to 15 yards, according to the material, the weave, etc.). The hand looms work on narrow cloth, mostly about 1 shaku (14.913 inches) wide, while the Eower looms are mainly on cloth about 36 inches wide. There are, owever, so many more hand looms than power looms that the total production from the former considerably exceeds that from the power looms, and the hand-loom product not only dominates the home market but a fair amount is exported. One reason that the hand loom survives is the fact that the money made by most of the hand-loom weavers is an addition to the regular family income, and so the home weavers are content to work for very little, not much over a fourth of the small wages received by the power-loom weaver; but if a farmer's wife makes only 10 to 12 sen a day (say, 5 to 6 cents) it is a welcome addition to the family earnings. It takes a weaver to every hand loom, but even in the factories a weaver rarely runs over two power looms. There is some tendency for the number of hand looms to decrease (there were only 638,412 in 1911 on all kinds of textiles as against 754,449 in 1907), but until the power-loom weaver becomes efficient enough to operate more looms, and until more looms are installed in the factories, there will continue to be a large hand-loom ...