Japanese Silk Factories Dbq

Japanese Silk Factories DBQ
Many Industrial Revolutions were booming in different countries throughout the world. Industrialization is classified as the process of developing machine production of goods, something that is vital for a surviving country. Japan, a late bloomer in the race towards industrial supremacy, was not fully industrialized until the beginning of the Meiji period. This period spanned from 1868 to 1912 and was responsible for the modernization of Japan. The Japanese knew they were behind other countries and knew they had to begin industrializing; as a result, they led the way in adapting the efficiency of Japanese Silk Factories. This offered an astronomical number of females more jobs. However, what people don’t usually …show more content…
Tasks in the factory would definitely not be considered sanitary in today’s era. Employees worked with live organisms without using gloves. These organisms were silkworms, according to Document A. While it may be a myth that they are not harmful to humans on their own, they may still spread diseases through physical contact. It is wrong to handle the organisms without gloves, though the factory workers did just that: “They are pulling threads off silkworm cocoons that are floating in hot water basins in front of them” (Document A). Gloves are not apparent in the photo shown or mentioned at all on the document. To add to the terrible conditions, one silk worker wrote a song about her experience in the horrible factory when her parents signed her away to work. The song contained the lyrics “My very heart wept tears of blood…” (Document G). It also contained the lyrics: “Mother! I hate the season in the silk plant; it’s from 4:00 PM to 4:00 AM…” (Document G). The environment was definitely not favorable for indentured servants based off this quote. As if working wasn’t horrible enough, plant managers inflicted both physical and emotional abuse upon the workers. The fact that parents could sign their children away, without the child’s consent, allowed for a lot of emotional abuse. It is also presented that “...managers were usually men who were sometimes physically abusive” (Document F). That is not something workers should have to deal with; they should not be placed in those terrible conditions. Logically, it’s debatable that the parents were okay with sending their children away due to the large amount of money they received in return. However, there was a line in the contract they had to sign that said “if there should be any infringement of this contract whatsoever, as reparations we will pay without question a sum of (20x) the said earnest money” (Document E). The earnest money

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Japanese Silk Factories Dbq Analysis