It was a letter to the editor of a Tokyo daily newspaper. And it captured at least some of the economic impact of the textile industry. Having made a minor fortune in the textile mills, the women had raised their sights, and raised them high.

To explain why the textile workers were able to obtain these high wages, in this chapter I explore the informational logic to the employment arrangements they used. Because each firm was so large and because so many women regularly quit work to return home and marry, potential employees had access to a steady flow of verifiable information about their potential employers. Owners, however, did not have accurate information about their recruits, could not readily monitor each recruit's performance, and could not precisely verify what their plant managers told them.