As the months passed by it gradually became clear that the effectiveness as well as the permanence of the work demanded suitable quarters. The heavy rental paid for the house made self-support impossible. Results already attained seemed to warrant appeal to friends for gifts, for the purpose of buying land and the erection of a building. Responses to our appeals provided the needed funds, land was purchased and a contract made with a carpenter on exceptionally favorable terms, just two days before the opening of the Russo-Japanese war (February, 1904). Immediately prices went up by leaps and bounds; but our contract was so well made and the carpenter had already made such full subcontracts for the lumber, etc., that we were not troubled because of war prices.
As we entered our new quarters in June, 1904, however, the factory shut down the main part of its work and discharged the majority of its workers. This was a severe blow to the Home. The occupants were reduced to seven girls. Although the factory opened again after a few months, the conditions during and after the war made it difficult for the factory to secure girls, and the Home, together with the other boarding-houses, suffered from lack of boarders. Beginning with March, 1907, however, special circumstances combined to fill the Home to its utmost capacity; during the three months of April, May, and June thirty applicants were refused admittance and as many more who desired to enter the school were declined.
Increasing acquaintance with the disastrous effects of factory labor,--the lint-filled air so often producing consumption, and the excessive heat of summer sometimes resulting even in sunstroke,--made Mr. Omoto unwilling to persuade girls to enter upon such a life. The needs of the Home also pressed upon his time. These considerations led him, in 1906, to give up his work in the factory altogether, in order to devote his entire time and strength to the Home and to the upbuilding of the moral and religious life of the girls.
In July, 1906, Mr. Omoto attended in Osaka the first convention of factory officials convened to study the problem of the proper care of operatives. Representatives were present from sixteen factories having night schools, and specimens of the work of the girls were compared. Mr. Omoto was fairly lionized because of the superior quality of the work sent in from our Home and many newspapers made special mention of him and his work.