JAPAN
without the cooperation of foreign experts. It may be supposed that, since the foreign middle-man plays such an important part in the country's over-sea commerce, his skill and experience must have been equally available for the purposes of industrial enterprise. But two difficulties stood in the way,—one legal, the other sentimental. The treaties forbade foreigners to hold real estate or engage in business outside the limits of the Settlements, thus rendering it impossible for them either to start factories on their own account or to enter into partnerships with native industrials; and an almost morbid anxiety to prove their independent competence impelled the Japanese to dispense permanently with the services of foreign employes. Rapid as has been the country's material progress, it might have been at once quicker and sounder had these restrictive treaties been revised a dozen years earlier, when Japan was still upon the threshold of her manufacturing career, and before repeated failures to obtain considerate treatment at the hands of Western Powers had prejudiced her against foreigners in all capacities. In 1885 she was ready to welcome the Occidental to every part of the country; regarded it as a matter of course that he should own real estate, and would gladly have become his partner in commerce or manufactures. In 1895 she had come to suspect that closer association with him might have dangers and disadvantages, and that the soil of Japan ought to be preserved from
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