But they remained stubbornly sanguine here also. This, too, was only a phase. A general of the Siberian expedition had said that this Bolshevism was only on the surface, like face powder, which would speedily wash off. So that was that, so to speak. Presently there would be a big rice crop; there were all indications of a bumper yield, and then the farmers would be happy again, and quiet. Anyway, capital was doing what it could. A horde of scholars and statisticians was studying the situation, and obviously it would be unwise to move in the dark, until these experts had reported. And the Government had appointed a commission for studying the problem of universal suffrage, which would report some day. It was a grave question whether the masses were ripe for the vote. It would not do to be over-hasty.
The task of obtaining reliable data with respect to the other side of the situation was equally baffling. A woman Socialist had sprung into fame through her articles in various magazines advocating the cause of the masses; partly, also, from the fact that her husband, a university professor, had been placed in jail. Kent went to see her in her small house crammed from floor to ceiling with books and pamphlets, the inevitable Karl Marx tomes looming forth with glorious prominence. She hailed him with joy, chanted a tirade of almost unbelievable accusations; the capitalists were holding the workers--men, women, and even children--in slavery. Many of them were kept far underground in mines and were not allowed to see light of day for months; they tried purposely to kill them by means of unwholesome food and unsanitary quarters in order to prevent them from going back to the country districts and spreading the cause of Socialism. It was easy to get young men and girls to replace them, owing to the general unemployment. But he wanted something more definite, data, figures. Certainly, he should have them. She would send him such in a few days. She sent him a vast bundle of papers, a mass of laboriously contrived compilations of figures, going back into the early days of Japanese industrialism, showing by minutely detailed statistics that one-half of the factory work women died from consumption within two years of employment in the great textile mills. It seemed almost incredible, and as he went into the matter he found that figures had been given for periods before the time when vital statistics of any kind had been kept by the Government or any one else; still closer examination showed that the tables did not check, were wildly contradictory in many cases. Evidently the author had drawn her data, enthusiastically, from her inner consciousness. He went back to her, told her that her information must be more consistent, more reliable. She tore the bundle from his hands. A few days later one of the vernacular papers published a lurid account from her, mentioning him by name as a capitalist spy who had been frustrated by the famous lady Socialist.