Abstract
This investigation aims at analyzing the characteristics of the industry and its labor force in Shingu City, using employment status. The chief manufacturing activities of Shingu City are those of lumber industry and of paper industry. There has been little change in its industrial composition since the beginning of the 1900's. The number of employees in the lumber industry, which is one of the two major manufacturing industries, has been decreasing.
The comparison between the labor force of these industries and that of other industries shows the following facts. Firstly, most of the heads of households who are laborers come from the city. Almost all of the movers from other districts working in these industries live in the suburbs of the city. The distribution of the residential sections shows that laborers live in more limited areas, around factories, than public officers. As for the younger generation, about the half of them have moved to other districts and they are engaged in manufacturing industries, trade industries, and service industries. The other half, remaining in the city, are working exclusively in trade industries and in service indus-tries. Few of them are working in manufacturing industries. There is a very remarkable tendency that the younger generation who moved to other districts are mostly children of farmers in the suburbs of the city, while those of shopkeepers in the city and of workers in trade industries mostly in the city. After all, the labor force made up of housewives coming back to factories compensates for the shortage of labor force of men, especially of the younger generation. In the case of manufacturing industries, most housewives working in them are from the families of laborers, while, in other industries, housewives are able to come from wider range.
The industrial labor force in Shingu City has such features mentioned above, and these features are reflected in the characters of the two major manufacturing industries of the city, the lumber industry and the paper industry. In the lumber industry, more couples are working together than in other industries. Moreover, the terms of service of laborers are shorter and the ranges of labor market are more limited. Perhaps the reason is based on labor conditions which are worse than those of other industries. In the paper industry, the labor market is available only in and around the city. But the terms of service of laborers are longer, and less couples are working together than in the lumber industry. It is not the paper industry but the lumber industry that is short of young labor force and is dependent on housewives.
The investigations in Shingu City show the fact that, in lumbering towns in Japan the exodus of the younger generation has caused the heavy dependence on labor force of house-wives and the rapid increase in the number of couples working together.
