[12] It is not to be inferred from the statements in this book that the political leaders and the organizers of industrial Japan have been dependent on our Home for ideas and ideals in regard to the problems raised by modern industry. Many of those leaders are men of cosmopolitan education and are well versed in the best and most recent of literature of the West on these matters. It is true, however, that our Home has been an important concrete experiment affording in Japan valuable suggestions and stimulus.
Our Home was designed to meet just such a situation and has to a remarkable degree, we think, succeeded. It has provided not only sufficient fresh air, nourishing food, adequate bedding, clean rooms, and wholesome recreation, but also moral and religious instruction, and some education. The girls in our Home have enjoyed conspicuously better health and have done better work and earned and sent to their parents more money than those of the other boarding-houses of Matsuyama. But better than these have been the educational, moral, and religious results. Their womanhood has been raised. They have been better fitted for life's duties and for motherhood than they would have been without the training which has been given them.
Moreover, the results of the Home have been such as to break down opposition. The good-will and cooperation of the factory officials were won. Factories in other parts of the country also have recognized our Home as presenting a splendid ideal which, in a measure, many of them are already following. The local and the central governments, as already shown, have repeatedly sent officials to inspect us, and in their reports have not only praised us, but have described our Home in detail, saying that we have solved the difficult problem of how to care for factory hands.
Through the Home we are reaching the lowest strata of the working classes of Japan, and are providing them with ideals, motives, and education, and in a way, too, which does not tend to pauperize them, for each girl pays as board a sum sufficient to cover actual living expenses. It is also exerting an influence on the townsfolk. The attitude of the people toward Christianity has undergone a marked change. Villages in the interior likewise have altered their attitude on seeing how their daughters, graduates of our Home, have improved both in intelligence and character, in marked contrast to those who have been in other boarding-houses. All in all, Mr. Omoto has attained remarkable success. He is absorbed, heart and soul, in his work of bettering the moral and religious conditions of the working girls of Japan, and is a man continuously growing in spiritual life, Christian character, and knowledge of men. I have never known a man more thoroughly converted or more enthusiastic in his chosen field of work. The Omoto of to-day is a different person from the reformed debauchee of thirteen years ago, who began this service for factory girls as the outcome of his sincere question, "Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?" His family have become possessed with the idea of social service, and his five children are being brought up in this atmosphere and in the fear of the Lord.