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Title: The Industrial Condition of Women and Girls in Honolulu - A Social Study
Author: Blascoer, Frances
Language: English
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The Industrial Condition
OF
WOMEN AND GIRLS
IN HONOLULU
A Social Study
BY
FRANCES BLASCOER
(FORMERLY EXECUTIVE SECRETARY OF THE NATIONAL ASSOCIATION FOR THE
ADVANCEMENT OF COLORED PEOPLE. NEW YORK CITY.)
Special Investigator for the Board of Trustees of the Kaiulani Home for
Young Women and Girls
Honolulu Social Survey
FIRST STUDY
HONOLULU, NOVEMBER, 1912
MR. GEO. W. SMITH,
_Chairman of the Executive Committee_.
HON. WM. L. WHITNEY,
_Secretary_.
HONOLULU
SOCIAL SURVEY
1912
UNDER THE AUSPICES OF THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES OF THE KAIULANI HOME FOR
GIRLS.
Vol. I. Industrial Condition of Women and Girls _Frances Blascoer_
Vol. II. Dependent Children _Frances Blascoer_
Vol. III. The Social Evil _James A. Rath_
Vol. IV. Housing Conditions _James A. Rath_
Vol. V. Family Budgets _James A. Rath_
EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE.
Mrs. Frances M. Swanzey _Chairman Committee on Industrial Conditions_
Mrs. Walter F. Dillingham Committee on Dependent Children
Mr. John R. Galt _The Social Evil_
Mr. George R. Carter _Housing Conditions_
Miss Louise Gulick _Family Budgets_
NOTE:—Volumes Nos. I. and II. now ready. Nos. III., IV., and V. will
appear later.
PREFACE
In preparing to submit the results of the five-months’ survey of
Honolulu’s industrial conditions as they affect women and girls, the
definition of a pessimist:—one who has just met an optimist,—has more
than once floated warningly through my mind.
In the face of such a warning it is perhaps with mixed feelings one
confesses to a conviction that much may be done to solve the problems of
the community.
Workrooms are not overcrowded; the air and light are always good; there
is no highspeed machinery; no processes dangerous to life and limb are
unguarded; fines and penalties are unknown; shop girls work only eight
hours a day, have an annual vacation with full pay for two weeks in most
shops and of at least one week in all; clerks, stenographers and
teachers may well feel that they have found here their earthly paradise
both as regards hours and salaries.
As in other tropical communities, the struggle for existence is not
agonizing. Even on kona days, throughout which all Honolulu wilts, night
brings relief. The meanest tenement in Kakaako is swept by the cool
trade winds that come down over the cloud-capped heights of Tantalus
during the greater part of the year; and there is no dread of the coming
of winter.
Kamaainas say that the aloha of the spirits of departed Hawaiians—who
were in life gentle, generous to a fault, loving flowers and music, but
caring most of all for their island home—forever guards their former
haunts and exhorts all evil.
Honolulu itself tempts one: the Pacific ocean at the waterfront,
changing from emerald to purple and sapphire, with the violet glow over
all which transfers itself at sunset to the slopes of the grey-green
hills backing the city; and between, the bungalow and cottage dotted
city itself; most of its squares built up solidly with tiny dwellings
surrounded by scarlet and pink flowered hibiscus hedges and shaded by
feathery-leaved algarobas, cocoanut and date palms and multi-colored
flowering trees; with ferns and vines everywhere.
One must look hard and often at the rectangular and unornamental
tenement blocks which obtrude themselves indiscriminately from
Kalihi-kai to Waikiki, before one remembers the law of supply and demand
which is, alas, still in force although increasingly hard-pressed by
public opinion, minimum wage-boards and the Industrial Workers of the
World.
Before considering the supply and demand, however, I wish to express to
the Board of Trustees of the Kaiulani Home my keen appreciation of the
opportunity to make the survey; especially in view of the fact that this
work involved a considerable enlargement of the plan they originally had
in mind when I was asked to come here. Conditions so clearly indicated
the necessity for a comprehensive constructive social program that while
a much more detailed piece of work might have been done in the
industrial field, I question whether such detail would have developed
anything more salient or pertinent than has been shown.
Since progressive thinkers agree that preventive measures make far more
surely for social betterment than anything corrective which has yet been
evolved, I have endeavored to gather together the measures which have
been successfully placed in operation in other communities and to
present to you for consideration such of them as fit your needs and
conditions.
Three representative bodies engaged in social research: the Bureau of
Municipal Research, the Russell Sage Foundation, and the Consumer’s
League,—all of New York City—cover practically the entire field and are
always at the service of those who wish information or advice.
More personal service is needed everywhere in Honolulu. The best program
possible to formulate soon becomes useless anywhere if carried on by
unthinking, unprogressive, however well-intentioned methods.
I wish to cordially thank the members of the Executive Committee and of
the sub-committees of the Survey, and not the least the wage-earners of
the community for the help and encouragement I have had. In spite of
queries which briefness of time allotted to the study made it necessary
at times to make directly of the latter, I have been received with the
utmost good will and helpfulness by workers of all nationalities.
I am especially indebted to the books of Miss Josephine Goldmark,
Fatigue and Efficiency; and of Miss Elizabeth Beardsley Butler, Women
and the Trades, for valuable information and suggestion. No one
interested in the welfare of wage-earners can fail to have his vision
widened and clarified by these two pieces of work, prepared with
infinite devotion and infinite care in the service of humanity both
employing and employed.
FOREWORD
There is a world movement in uplift work for women. Along with the rest
of the world Hawaii is awaking to this call. In all lines of endeavor
there must be a working plan. But first must be facts “writ large” and
plain. In view of this interest and the desire to do a vital work for
the wage-earning girls and women of Honolulu, the Trustees of Kaiulani
Home secured the services of a trained investigator, Miss Frances E.
Blascoer of New York City, to make a study of industrial conditions
among the working girls of Honolulu and to present a plan for the
organization of a Vocational Bureau here in the islands.
With the coming of Miss Blascoer the vision grew; a social survey was
attempted, a survey which should be the means of presenting to citizens
and social workers the real state of industrial and housing conditions;
the character of the amusements offered to our community; facts anent
dependent children; facts concerning the devastation of the social evil.
Religious, moral, intellectual, professional and vocational education;
community hygiene; sanitary regulations; the beautifying of Honolulu;
all these demand the concerted action of women and men. And then, too,
there is the “call of the children” that comes with such strength of
appeal from the findings of the Juvenile Court. The dependent child must
be considered. The crimes that imperil the virtue of unprotected little
girls must not be hidden. The fact must be faced of the incursion of
Hawaii by large numbers of unmarried men and the accompanying menace to
young women. Unquestionably, the conditions under which girls and women
work should be known by the public.
Churches, associations, clubs, individual philanthropists, should have
accurate knowledge of social conditions; that pauperizing may be avoided
and that the waste of duplication in charitable work may be avoided.
Undoubtedly more light is needed for the conduct of benevolent
enterprises, perhaps not more giving, but more “efficient giving.”
Miss Blascoer’s report on the industrial conditions of women and girls,
it is believed, will prove a basis for the working out of many programs
for community betterment. May it prove rich in suggestion to the women
of Honolulu. May all put shoulder to shoulder in the task of solving the
industrial problem of the girls and women in our midst, and may it give
to those who earnestly seek, a mission, a vision of great opportunities.
To those who give and to those who receive, may there result a meeting,
not at the “crossroads” of mistrust and suspicion, but on the “main
traveled thoroughfare” which leads to mutual helpfulness. Hasten the day
of its arriving!
IDA M. POPE,
President, Board of Trustees of Kaiulani Home.
TO THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES OF KAIULANI HOME FOR GIRLS
The Industrial Committee of the Social Survey is composed of the
following members:—
Bishop Restarick,
Miss Ida M. Pope,
Father Stephen,
Dr. Doremus Scudder,
Professor Edgar Wood,
Mrs. May Wilcox,
President A. F. Griffiths,
Miss Kemp (who takes Miss Bosher’s place),
Mrs. Walter F. Frear,
Mrs. Frederick J. Lowrey,
Miss Louise Gulick,
Miss Nora Sturgeon,
Mrs. Francis M. Swanzy, Chairman.
Its mission of inquiry into the condition of working girls and women in
Honolulu has been conducted by three sub-committees, viz.—
(1) On Conditions in Homes.
(2) On Conditions of Work.
(3) On Conditions of Recreations and Amusements.
The first work done was in the way of inquiry into certain individual
cases presented by Miss Blascoer; this brought helpful results. A
seamstress inquiry was made by Mesdames Frear, Lowrey, Wilcox and
Swanzy, in which 250 circulars were sent out. The various responses
emphasize strongly the need of a training school for unskilled workers
in this line. A stenographer and typewriter inquiry was conducted by
Professor Wood, assisted by Messrs. George R. Carter, Walter Dillingham,
A. F. Judd, G. P. Wilder and W. H. Baird, temporary members of the
Sub-committee on Conditions of Work and constituting a representative
group of business men especially interested. Perhaps the most
interesting as well as most valuable inquiry was that into the social
activities of the community, its Recreations and Amusements. President
Griffiths prepared a list of the Public Amusements and, assisted by some
twenty-six persons, undertook the investigation of the theatres, moving
picture shows, dance halls, and parks. Mrs. Frear personally made a most
exhaustive inquiry into the social activities of the many Churches of
Honolulu, and Misses Bosher and Kemp did the same for the Schools; Miss
Gulick did the work for the Missions and Settlements, Mrs. Lowrey for
the several Miscellaneous Associations, while Mrs. Swanzy collected
information regarding the fifty-odd Lodges and Fraternal Organizations.
Meetings of the Committee and the Sub-committees were held during the
months of July, August, September, and October; the last, of the
committee as a whole, was well attended and the discussion in connection
with the outline of a constructive program kindly given by Miss Blascoer
proved highly profitable. The reports of the sub-committees have been
turned in to Miss Blascoer, whose digest of conditions she presents to
your Board. A slight sketch of the reaction of this industrial inquiry
on the persons who took part in it may, however, be of interest. Without
exception the effect of this work has been most stimulating and
beneficial, so that it may safely be said that whatever the final
outcome to the community of the Social Survey, each individual of this
committee has been helped to a better knowledge of existing conditions
and to a broader outlook on life. Especially for the lay members windows
have been opened in various directions. May I quote an opinion or two?
One says:—“This inquiry has aroused interest. We have learned how other
people’s work runs along the same lines as ours; there has been too much
of ‘going it alone.’” Another:—“It has been a decided help and stirred
interest and work; it has promoted discussion and information
generally.”
The School inquiry, which elicited a very generous and valuable
response, in several cases of public school teachers proved a direct
stimulus and assistance in affording opportune suggestion for ways of
recreation and amusement; while the fact that an extensive work is done
by the Lodges and Fraternal Organizations was made evident by that
inquiry—a work that is kindly as well as charitable, a work that is
conducive to the development of friendly feeling and good will towards
men. The social activities of these societies also cover a large field.
The Church inquiry showed that an astonishing amount is done among some
of our Honolulu congregations for the welfare and wholesome amusement of
young people and adults, and the Church of Latter Day Saints may be
cited as particularly active in looking after its people on week-days as
well as Sundays.
One of our women members states that she finds her personal interest in
the welfare of working girls greatly broadened and now has a better idea
of the needs of girls from poor homes, particularly those who have had
few opportunities. In connection with the work of the Industrial
Committee several Amusement Circles for girls have been started in
different parts of town by Miss Nora Sturgeon and a band of volunteer
helpers, and interest in this line of effort has been directly incited
among others who were drawn into the detail of investigation.
Finally, Dr. Scudder says that he has been thinking along these lines
for twenty years and feels that this industrial inquiry will be of
immense value in bringing to the notice of many who are also interested,
a tangible plan of action as the result of knowledge of conditions. He
intends speaking on the necessity for child labor laws, to be enacted by
the next Legislature, so that the deplorable conditions existing in
other countries need never be known here, and he will endeavor to enlist
the sympathy and influence of his congregation. His own interest has
been quickened, and he believes that the Kaiulani Home Board should be
heartily congratulated on having been the means of instigating an
inquiry which it is hoped will crystallize into some definite and
concerted program for the betterment of social and industrial conditions
in Hawaii nei.
JULIE JUDD SWANZY,
Chairman.
October 29, 1912.
GENERAL STATEMENT
TO THE BOARD OF TRUSTEES OF THE KAIULANI HOME, AND MEMBERS OF THE
CITIZENS’ COMMITTEE OF THE HONOLULU SOCIAL SURVEY.
In this crossroads community of Honolulu—a community where defying
Kipling, not only the East and West, but also the North and South meet
(and like one another) there are almost as many races and admixtures
represented as a man has fingers and toes.
A girl born of a mother whose blood is half-Hawaiian and half-Chinese,
and of a Norwegian father, works side by side on the one hand with a
Korean maiden and on the other with a young woman who is negro-American
through one parent and German-Hawaiian through another. The daughter of
a Portuguese-Japanese mother and an American father schoolmates with the
child of a Basuto woman and an Englishman; while side by side
Portuguese, Porto Rican, Japanese, Hawaiian, Filipino and Negro, with
all these and other inter-racial variations, eat their lunches side by
side in the pineapple canneries and laundries. Schools, athletic teams
and other activities show the same racial composition.
And quite as assorted as the blood is apt to be the mode of life, dress
and thought of this polyglot population. One sees a Chinese woman in her
charming native costume of brocaded silk, her hair carefully pomaded and
profusely ornamented, while her feet (not by any means the
“golden-lilies” so rapidly passing into oblivion) of the small-footed
Chinese are encased in silk hose and patent leather pumps. Furthermore,
she leads by the hand a small daughter in full American panoply, not
omitting the butterfly bow of ribbon in her hair. If followed to her
home she will be found eating her bowl of rice or stewed mushrooms with
a spoon, instead of the historic chop-sticks, her children doing the
same or more likely making their fingers do duty.
Or, one meets a Japanese man, smiling with affectionate fatuity at the
infant he carries in his arms; his own kimonoed and sandalled person
topped with a regulation Panama hat. Or again, one attends a suffrage
meeting with the audience made up of Hawaiian, Chinese and women of
other nationalities, and listens to the familiar appeals for equal pay
for equal work; amendments to the property laws; reduction of infant
mortality; more schools. And so on, until one is permeated with a fine
glow of wonder at the universality of it all, the “getting together”
which is the surest promise of world peace, however much one may from an
aesthetic standpoint regret certain of the departures.
Then, too, the workrooms, public utilities, public amusements (and very
generally acquaintances and friendships) untrammeled by racial
boundaries, cause one to wonder anew not alone at the ease with which
Honolulu has dispensed with those boundaries but also at the fact that
in this year of our Lord they still prevail in the caste-ridden
communities of the mainland. One says prevail rather than exist
advisedly, because race prejudice undoubtedly exists in Honolulu, and is
openly expressed. Thus far, however, the women and girls of Honolulu are
unhampered in their opportunities, and no man’s right to decent public
courtesy is violated by race feeling. An Hawaiian incompetent is equally
liable to be replaced with a Portuguese, a Chinese, a Japanese, or what
not.
Certain of the minor industries employ no Japanese or Chinese help,
fearing that a knowledge of processes will lead to “unfair competition”;
but on the other hand shops manned by the Orientals in these very same
industries are springing up all over the city. And not only do they
spring up, but one finds they usually stay.
Honolulu, in its industrial development, will need to consider the
two-fold life, as it were, of the normal and the tourist population. The
small shop, along various lines described more in detail under
constructive suggestions, seems in fact the best means of taking care of
the workers who might be trained in the needle trades and other kindred
occupations, and for whom there is no opportunity to secure stenographic
positions, or for clerical or shop work.
For the unskilled worker, Dr. E. V. Wilcox of the Federal Agricultural
Experiment Station, who is the sponsor for the algaroba industry is said
to see the same chance in a probable kukui-nut industry. Dr. Wilcox is
quoted in the morning paper as follows:
“Hawaii once did a big business in the exportation of kukui oil,” he
says, “the old customs records of the fifties show that as high as
ten thousand gallons were exported some years. Kukui oil is a
valuable paint oil, being better than the best linseed and worth
here as a substitute for linseed at least a dollar a gallon. The
cake, after the oil has been expressed, is a valuable fertilizing
product.
“I am working now to see what percentage of oil can be extracted
from the nut commercially and also getting figures on the cost of
gathering, manufacturing and such. To put the kukui industry on its
feet, all it needs is for someone to go into the business with
capital enough to buy the entire crop and to install machinery to
crush and press it. There are thousands of tons of kukui all over
the mountains and the gathering of these will give work to the same
class of people as have found the algaroba bean picking such a
godsend. In Hawaii alone we use a great deal of paint oil and there
should be ready market here. Hawaii imported fifty thousand gallons
of linseed oil in the last fiscal year. If we could have substituted
kukui oil, the Territory would have fifty thousand dollars more in
circulation, for last year alone, much of it in circulation among
the very poor.”
Various business men have suggested the need for a paper box factory;
and it does not seem unlikely that such an establishment will soon be
added to the industries giving employment to unskilled labor. A silk
mill is rumored, but nothing definite can be learned concerning the
reality of the rumor.
There is no doubt of the healthy prosperity and progressive spirit of
the city; but those interested in the development of Honolulu in its
broader sense will find it necessary to consider the questions of public
health involved in long working hours for women and girls, and in the
labor of children; questions of public intelligence and citizenship
bound up with the establishment of night schools and public recreation
centers—of public morals as related to more opportunity, better wages,
and better training to be wives and mothers, rather than subjection by
unemployment, less than a living wage, and neglect to the temptations
held forth by soldier, tourist and citizen.
CONSTRUCTIVE SUGGESTIONS
It is only five years ago since the Pittsburgh Survey commenced the
investigation which was the first exhaustive attempt to interpret an
industrial community to employers of labor, as well as to the community
at large; and since the publication of Miss Butler’s Women and the
Trades in 1909—the first of the six volumes of the Survey to appear—more
than one city has made inquiry into the conditions under which the women
and girls of the community were earning their livelihood. Notable among
these inquirers have been those made by the Women’s City Club of
Chicago, under the auspices of the Russell Sage Foundation; by the
Kansas City Board of Public Welfare, which began in February, 1911, and
is still in process; and by the Russell Sage Foundation for Birmingham,
Ala., the latter being a reportorial survey rather than the intensive
investigation made in Pittsburgh.
Five years before any of these surveys were undertaken, however, a
committee composed of sociologists, economists, philanthropists and
educators not only made a special investigation of the workrooms of New
York City, but reached conclusions which concretely express at any rate
the salient points brought out by every survey which has since been
made: (1) that wages of unskilled labor were declining and in most cases
insufficient to maintain the worker according to the minimum community
standard of living; (2) that while there were in many directions good
opportunities for skilled labor, the supply was inadequate; (3) that the
condition of the young, inexpert working girls must be ameliorated by
the opening of training classes for those who have reached the age to
obtain working papers; and later experience has shown, (4) that a
vocational bureau established in connection with the public schools
tends to help girls make the most of their equipment and guides them
away from the occupations which do not offer the right sort of
opportunity.
The survey in Honolulu confirms the conclusions reached in other
communities only partially. Here the wages of unskilled labor are
advancing, although they are still insufficient to maintain the worker
according to the minimum community standard of living, for the reason
that the only occupation in which any number of unskilled girls and
women are at present employed, i. e. the canneries, affords them
employment during only four months of the year. The second finding, that
while there are in many directions good opportunity for skilled labor
the supply is inadequate, is true here only partially. There are only
two occupations, that of seamstress and that of stenographer which offer
opportunity to any number, and in each there is every indication that at
least fifty more experienced workers could be used without crowding the
present workers. The third finding, that the condition of young,
inexpert working girls must be ameliorated by the opening of training
classes for those who have reached the age to obtain working papers,
applies unqualifiedly in Honolulu; but their condition must be
ameliorated in a number of other ways as well. Honolulu is faced, in
fact, with the unique problem of evolving new enterprises to take care
of its women and girl workers, in addition to creating the machinery for
dealing with those now in existence according to the most progressive
methods in operation elsewhere.
Fortunately the survey has uncovered community needs unfilled, as well
as suggested avenues of employment which there is every reason to
believe could be made profitable with intelligent management; and with
this in mind, together with the possibilities of creating other
preventive and educational social machinery, the following suggestions
are made:
MUSLIN UNDERWEAR FACTORY.
A factory for the manufacture of muslin underwear, sheets, pillow cases,
mosquito nets, starting with not more than ten employes.
A canvass of the five leading dry-goods shops showed that there is
undoubtedly a market for a sufficient amount of underwear alone to keep
a factory busy at least six months in the year. This is especially true
since the pake shops making these articles are finding it difficult to
obtain help, the Chinese boys preferring to go into the mercantile shops
and factories. A number of small Japanese shops for the manufacture of
shirts and shirt waists are finding their work profitable; but the
manufacture of underwear requires organizing and concentrating.
In addition to the dry-goods shops in the regular shopping district, a
cheaper grade of underwear could be sold to the shops in the Oriental
section of the city, which now carry a regular line of American
underwear at prices considerably above those asked on the mainland. For
instance, a nightgown selling at $1.00 in San Francisco brings $1.35 or
even $1.50 here.
Such an establishment should be managed by two trained people; one
combining the office detail and selling end with the help of a
stenographer and bookkeeper; the other designing and cutting, and in
charge of employing and directing the working force. For the latter
position it might be possible to secure a woman; but someone with
training and practical experience in the underwear business would be
indispensable.
Managers of the dry-goods establishments in Honolulu say that if the raw
materials were purchased direct from the factory, they believe the
enterprise would be successful. A few well-made, well-cut articles to
start with would be more desirable than a great variety, they say. A
display room to which the community might be invited, would be
desirable, and would tend to create a demand for the articles made.
It has also been suggested in connection with such a factory that
unfinished overalls in large quantities—10,000 dozen—could be had for
finishing from San Francisco, where there is difficulty under the new
eight-hour law in getting the work done. This class of work is, however,
usually the poorest paid of any of the home industries, and the matter
should be carefully looked into.
The present demand (yearly) in the five establishments canvassed is as
follows:
QUANTITY AND QUALITY OF MUSLIN UNDERWEAR AND LINGERIE PURCHASED PER
YEAR BY FIVE DRY-GOODS SHOPS.[1]
═════════════╤═════════════╤═════════════╤═════════════╤═════════════
ARTICLES. │ Price per │ No. dozen │ Sizes most │ REMARKS.
│ dozen, │ used per │ used. │
│(Wholesale). │ year. │ │
═════════════╪═════════════╪═════════════╪═════════════╪═════════════
Aprons │$6.00, 9.00, │ 14│ Medium. │Reported by
│15.00, 18.00.│ │ │three firms.
─────────────┼─────────────┼─────────────┼─────────────┼─────────────
Chemises │$6.00, 7.50, │ 242│ 32-44, │One firm
│9.00, 12.00, │ │ inclusive │reports
│28.00, 36.00,│ │ │majority sold
│48.00. │ │ │handmade.
─────────────┼─────────────┼─────────────┼─────────────┼─────────────
Combinations:│$7.50, 9.00, │ 80│ 32-44, │
corset │12.00, 24.00,│ │ inclusive │
covers and │36.00, 60.00 │ │ │
drawers │ │ │ │
─────────────┼─────────────┼─────────────┼─────────────┼─────────────
Corset covers│$7.50, 9.00, │ 130│ 32-44, │
and skirts │12.00, 36.00,│ │ inclusive │
│60.00. │ │ │
─────────────┼─────────────┼─────────────┼─────────────┼─────────────
Corset covers│$2.25, 4.00, │ 91│ 34-40, │One firm
│4.50, 5.00, │ │ inclusive │reports few
│6.00, 15.00, │ │ │sold.
│24.00. │ │ │
─────────────┼─────────────┼─────────────┼─────────────┼─────────────
Drawers │$2.25, 4.50, │ 126│ 23-27 │One firm
│5.75, 11.50, │ │ │reports
│24.00. │ │ │little
│ │ │ │demand.
─────────────┼─────────────┼─────────────┼─────────────┼─────────────
Muslin or │$9.00, 12.00,│ 310│ 36-40, │One firm
Nainsook │24.00, 36.00,│ │ inclusive │reports
princess │48.00, 50.00.│ │ │little
slips │ │ │ │demand.
─────────────┼─────────────┼─────────────┼─────────────┼─────────────
Skirts │$4.50, 6.00, │ 208│ all sizes, │
│12.00, 24.00,│ │ 36-42 │
│60.00, │ │ │
│108.00. │ │ │
─────────────┼─────────────┼─────────────┼─────────────┼─────────────
Kimonos │$6.00, 12.00,│ 25│ 32-44 │
│36.00, 48.00,│ │ │
│60.00, 96.00.│ │ │
─────────────┼─────────────┼─────────────┼─────────────┼─────────────
Dressing │$4.50, 9.00, │ 97│ 32-44 │
sacques │12.00, 18.00,│ │ │
│30.00, 48.00.│ │ │
═════════════╧═════════════╧═════════════╧═════════════╧═════════════
Footnote 1:
At present these articles are purchased in New York City.
AN HAWAIIAN SHOP
A tour of the local curio and art shops discloses many choice articles
typically Hawaiian in their manufacture or character. There are to be
found everywhere quantities of tapas, lauhala mats, calabashes and leis,
but in so heterogeneous a mass and so mixed with other things that their
appeal is apt to miscarry. Tourists find it difficult to select mementos
to carry away with them, and so much valuable patronage is lost.
There are infinite possibilities in an establishment of this kind if
managed by a person of good judgment and artistic taste. A careful
assemblage of the above articles, groups of the really artistic
photographs of native types to be found in some of the shops, framed in
the beautiful koa or kou woods; together with other wares which might be
easily evolved, would make an attractive showing. Home-made candy
specialties and other delicacies characteristic of the islands—creamed
cocoanuts; pineapple candies; home-made guava jelly; mango jam;
chutney—all are in demand. A tea room, with a young woman to check
packages for shoppers, has also been suggested by a number of people. A
poi luncheon (which is nowhere available at present) on steamer days
would be a novelty.
An article in the Sunday Advertiser called attention to the fact that no
fruit shop in Honolulu made a specialty of Hawaiian fruits; and
suggested that lauhala baskets filled with choice mangoes, Hawaiian
oranges, bananas, strawberry guavas, mountain apples, figs and papaias
wrapped in ti leaves, would be acceptable gifts to departing friends.
Any plan of this kind, however, would depend on the extermination of the
Mediterranean fruit-fly whose depredations have caused an embargo to be
laid on all fruits and vegetables from the Island of Oahu.
Hawaiian shop attendants, with Chinese and Japanese girls serving tea,
would be added attractions.
These features should furnish material for advertisements to be placed
on steamers and in the literature of the promotion committee.
It would be difficult to give the regulation store building the
distinctively Hawaiian atmosphere which ought to go far toward making a
success of such an enterprise: and an attractive cottage with a certain
amount of ground space would furnish a most appropriate setting.
PROPOSED TRADE SCHOOL
The investigation into the condition of working women and girls in
Honolulu was made primarily with a view to establishing a trade school
and special attention was therefore paid to community needs; for in
organizing a school of this kind, it is of first importance to suit the
course of training to those needs. The ideal of the present day
vocational school is moreover not only to train a worker to become
self-supporting in her environment, but to give her training in a
sufficient variety of allied occupations to enable her to shift from one
to another in case of need. In a large city, for instance, she is taught
the use of electric power machine operating, which enables her in their
respective seasons to work on women’s underwear, ready-made dresses,
straw-sewing of men’s and women’s hats, and a variety of other
occupations.
She is taught her right relation to her employer, to her fellow-worker,
and to her work; to value health and how to keep it; to make use of
whatever previous education she may have had: in general, to develop
into a better woman as well as a better worker.
These were the ideals formulated by the founders of the Manhattan Trade
School for Girls in New York City—the first trade school to be
established in America, and with a curriculum applied to local needs,
they will serve quite as admirably for Honolulu.
The situation seems to call more than anything else for the tying up of
the threads connecting a vocational and employment bureau, a trade
school and a place for marketing the product of the workers; and a
curriculum which would seem to make for the greatest success along all
three lines is about as follows:
1. Courses in the Needle Trades:
Dressmaking.
Shirtwaists and Underwear.
Mosquito Nets.
Household articles: Sheets, Pillow Cases, etc.
Care of clothing (darning and mending).
Handwork: Hemstitching, Embroidery, Lace-making.
2. Fancy articles:
Tapas, leis of seeds, shells, etc.
3. Lauhala weaving.
4. Hat weaving.
5. Gardening.
6. Flower cultivation and lei making.
7. Fruit and vegetable gardening.
8. Cooking:
Family cooking for girls who wish to enter domestic service.
Candy-making.
Jellies and Preserves.
Cake-making.
9. Housekeeping:
Care of bedrooms.
Cleaning and exterminating vermin.
10. Cleaning gloves and laces.
If these courses could be arranged for the morning, afternoon and
evening they would be available for school girls and working girls, as
well as for pupils who were otherwise unoccupied. Courses Nos. 5 to 10
inclusive, might be offered morning and afternoon, and Nos. 1 to 4
inclusive, in the afternoon and evening. The two sets of courses would
of course require separate staffs of instructors; I should say two
instructors for each course.
An arrangement could no doubt be made with the various churches,
settlements, etc., now giving elementary sewing to send to the school
the girls who wish to make sewing their profession.
Practically all the trade schools include hygiene, physical training,
and most of them have a basketball team. Local physicians would no doubt
be glad to give a course of lectures at the school and an arrangement
might be made with one of the Settlements whereby its advance sewing
course would be taken over in exchange for physical training by the
Settlement instructor.
Trade schools have found it both desirable and profitable to market
their output; not only because it gives the pupils an immediate earning
power, but also because it encourages them to put their best efforts
into their work when they know it is to have a place in the scheme of
things.
If an Hawaiian shop, as suggested elsewhere, were established, it would
afford a market for certain of the articles made by the pupils of the
school—lauhala mats, leis, flowers, candy, preserves, cake, etc. Other
articles might be disposed of at the school. This is done at both the
New York and Boston Trade Schools, where sales are held periodically.
The successful establishment of an underwear factory would as time goes
on, naturally offer a market for girls taking the course in Domestic
Art; while a clientele for fine home-made candies could undoubtedly be
built up after the manner of the Martha Washington and Mary Elizabeth
shops in New York, which have developed from small beginnings with a few
customers into extensive and profitable enterprises.
It would be desirable to have pupils take the entire course, both for
wage-earning purposes and for their own development. The course in
cultivation of flowers, fruits and vegetables ought to be of special
value, for there is much space around the cottages, especially in the
poorer districts, of which no use is made. Records kept by one of the
schools which has done some work in home gardening show that the usual
fate of the sprouting seeds was to feed the chickens. No instruction was
given, however, in methods of protection against either chickens or
insects. The Federal Experiment Station would help in this matter.
Roger W. Babson, statistician, economist and the last authority on the
high cost of living declares that “our real need is for more farmers and
fewer politicians. When every man makes use of his own back yard, the
cost of living will be reduced and the ideals talked of by the
progressive will be actually accomplished—but not until then.”[2]
Footnote 2:
Current Literature, August, 1912, p. 166.
The course outlined is somewhat similar to the scheme of education given
so successfully in Hampton Institute, Va., which is at once the pioneer
and the ranking institution for the vocational training of primitive
people. Their girls, while given very thorough industrial training are
not given this training, however, with the idea of putting them into the
trades. “The aim and purpose is primarily to develop homemakers, women
who can go back to their homes in the rural districts and teach their
people how to keep their homes clean and sanitary, how to care for their
children and for the sick and aged, how to make and keep in repair their
own clothing, and how to do the innumerable other things that should be
done in a well-regulated home,” says the Commissioner of Labor in his
report on Industrial Education.[3]
Footnote 3:
Twenty-fifth annual report of the Commissioner of Labor, 1910, p. 321.
In this connection it is interesting to note that General Armstrong, the
founder of Hampton, was the son of Hawaii’s first Commissioner of
Education, whose reports advocated this same training for Hawaiians in
the early missionary days.
VOCATIONAL AND EMPLOYMENT BUREAU
The establishment and intelligent conduct of a vocational employment
bureau goes far to help a community secure a comprehensive grasp of its
industrial situation. Such a bureau is most efficient when officially
connected with the department of public instruction. It may, however, be
conducted by an unofficial body, as in Cincinnati, where it is under the
management of the Charlotte Schmidlapp Foundation, and in Boston, where
it had its inception, and is still philanthropically managed. There
must, however, be a sound Compulsory Attendance School Law on which to
base it. Hawaii’s Law requiring school attendance of all children from
six to seventeen years of age is admirable; but it is weakened by the
proviso: “If when a child has reached the age of twelve years and has
not completed the fourth grade of the primary school _he shall be
eligible for instruction ONLY in an industrial school_.”
While it is safe to assume that the child who has attended school from
his sixth year until his twelfth, without reaching a higher grade than
the fourth primary, should undoubtedly be trained for an industrial
occupation; yet on the other hand the exemption from compulsory school
attendance “if there is no school within four miles of a child’s home,”
together with the known insufficient school accommodation in parts of
the Hawaiian Islands makes it easily possible for hundreds of children
to be prevented from entering school until their seventh or eighth year.
In families who have come to Honolulu from rural districts, children
have reached the age of ten without having been entered at school. It is
obviously unfair, therefore, to deprive the child of an opportunity to
receive an education because through no fault of his he may have been
retarded in his studies.
Wherever there is large foreign element, or where for other reasons the
normal rate of progress is likely to be departed from by any large
number of pupils, the course favored generally by educators is the
establishment of vacation schools, in which a child who fails of
promotion may have instruction in the studies needed to bring him up
with his class.
Study rooms in charge of teachers, in the evening, or after school, have
also been opened in districts where non-English-speaking parents are
unable to assist their children in preparing lessons.
Matters of retardation and the remedies therefor are at present
receiving the most careful attention of progressive educators. The
Russell Sage Foundation and the Bureau of Municipal Research in New
York, two social investigating bodies, are seeking the best means for
removing disabilities which may prevent a child from advancing in school
and so of having an opportunity in life.
No sociological investigation of rural conditions has been made in
Hawaii for the purpose of learning the exact extent to which children of
the rural communities are prevented from attending school, and what
actual bearing this has on plantation labor. It has been demonstrated
beyond a doubt, however, that the negroes in the southern states have
left the plantations mainly because their children either did not have
any educational facilities, or because the schools they might or could
attend were not up to the standard. In a number of instances they built
and equipped their own schoolhouses.
A people that cannot see a bettering of conditions—not alone economic,
but individually broadening for their children—is always prone to be
dissatisfied.
The above clause in the Hawaiian School Law might be changed to one
permitting a child who has failed to make a certain grade after
attending school a given number of years, to take industrial training
plus a certain number of days of school attendance, as this is
undoubtedly its intent.
The clause permitting a child to leave school at the age of fifteen and
go to work, regardless of what grade has been reached, is also not in
accordance with the most progressive laws in force elsewhere.
Cincinnati has approached the German continuation school plan by passing
a law making it compulsory for a child to be either in school or at work
after fifteen, a day’s attendance at school each week being required
until the eighteenth year if the child goes to work at the age of
fifteen. A certain grade rating must have been reached, however, before
working papers can be obtained on this basis; and the child must also
pass a medical examination which proves him to be in fit physical
condition to become a wage-earner.
Before working papers are issued, moreover, a position must be obtained,
a signed card from the prospective employer being the basis on which
permission to work is given. Each time a position is changed these
papers are re-issued, and no employer is permitted by law to engage a
boy or girl under eighteen on papers issued to any other employer. A
physical examination is made each time the working papers are re-issued
in order that it may be noted what effect if any an occupation is having
on a child’s health.
A careful record is kept of the child’s family history, as well as of
the occupation in which he is engaged; and his working history if more
than one position is held. This latter gives the reason for changing,
and helps in the study of a child’s capabilities.
At the time of graduation parents of each child are sent a circular by
the Board of Education in which are described the further educational
advantages offered by the city or state—high schools, trade schools,
etc.—and the time necessary to be spent in each; also the probable
advantages accruing from each course. The parents are asked to consult
with the vocational bureau, which receives also the report of the
teacher in charge of vocational matters in each school.
With the help of such a bureau boys and girls have been prevented from
entering occupations offering no chance for advancement, and have been
placed in line to earn an adequate livelihood. Where mental equipment
justifies it, children who would otherwise be obliged to become
wage-earners are granted scholarships enabling them either to take
training in a trade school or to continue their studies in high school.
This aid is given in Cincinnati in the form of a loan granted by the
Charlotte Schmidlapp Foundation. In New York the scholarships are
supported by a philanthropic committee, connected with the Henry Street
Settlement.
Dean Herman Schneider, of the School of Engineering in the University of
Cincinnati, has been working out a continuation school plan whereby
instead of a trade school with expensive equipment the students in the
School of Engineering are given their shop training in the factories,
their instructors giving part time to factory work and part time in the
University. In this way not the least valuable lesson learned is the
knowledge gained by the University itself of what methods of instruction
are actually of value as applied to business practice.
Mr. Schneider is also giving much attention to the question of
temperaments suited to various occupations. A highly organized nervous
temperament cannot permanently engage in enervating work—i.e. work done
over and over again by each worker in the smallest number of cubic feet
of space—without making for the breakdown of the individual unless the
period of work is shortened sufficiently to permit this worker to engage
in some other form of activity which will counteract the effect of his
daily occupation. This prescription of vocation and avocation Mr.
Schneider conceives to be the real function of vocational guidance; and
he freely confesses that he is as yet far from a solution of the
problem.
In his analysis of work he says: “It is fundamental that mankind must do
stimulating work or retrogress. This is the bed-rock upon which our
constructive programs of education, industry, sociology—of living, must
rest.... One may safely propose as a thesis that only that civilization
will prevail whose laws and life conform most nearly of Natural Law. The
worth of our education, our laws, our scientific management will be
determined by the extent to which they will make clear, conform with and
supplement the laws of work. Their test will lie in the degree to which
they are useful in leading us safely forward to better, brighter
condition of work and their basic idea must be service to the mass.”
PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS
The questionnaire sent to the public schools, asking how many pupils in
the classes belong to clubs or other groups for recreational purposes,
in the settlements and elsewhere, brings out the fact that, with only
one school report missing, 597 children out of the 6,031 attending
school in Honolulu this year are in such ways provided with socializing
influence once a week. Of course many have home surroundings which make
outside influence unnecessary. The public playground, however, has an
attendance of over two hundred a day, an indication of what might be
expected in attendance if the school yards were equipped with playground
apparatus and placed under supervision.
No social activities are reported by the public schools themselves
excepting a picnic given annually or semi-annually.
On the other hand, a similar questionnaire sent to the private schools,
including those philanthropically supported brought forth the following
list of activities for boys and girls:
Athletic Teams,
Baseball Teams,
Basketball Teams,
Tennis,
Tramps,
Picnics,
House and Table Games,
Piano Recitals,
Glee Club,
Orchestra under Trained Leader,
Society to Develop Thoughtfulness for other peoples (races),
Oratory Society,
Debating Society,
Private Theatricals,
Travel Talks, illustrated,
Dances,
Thanksgiving Offering to Poor,
Flowers for Decorating Soldiers’ Graves,
Christian Endeavor Societies,
Junior Auxiliary to Board of Missions,
Student’s Council,
School Magazine.
This very full and comprehensive program throws into strong relief the
barrenness of the lives of the students after they graduate or leave
these institutions, as well as the lack of any like opportunity for
development offered by the community to its young people not in private
schools. These programs will, it is hoped, be used by any committee
taking up the question of public recreation.
I have talked with graduates of Kamehameha, who fortunately have an
alumnae association, and with Normal and Punahou girls, who found no
substitute for their basketball, tennis, and social life generally as
they lived it while at school. It is true that Palama and Kalihi
Settlements have basketball, dancing and gymnasium classes; but these
institutions owe a duty to the economically handicapped portion of the
community which they are taxed to their capacity in discharging. I
question very strongly if it is advisable to call on philanthropy for
the provision of cultural and social activities for wage-earners. Is it
not rather philanthropy’s best service to stimulate those who are as yet
unawakened to the possibilities of life, and then pass them on to the
normal community for the development of those possibilities?
An inquiry made by the sub-committee on public and quasi-public
amusements—settlements, churches, benevolent societies, lodges,
etc.—brought out the usual social equipment of a city of this size. But
there is an element which finds its social expression rather in
independent groups made up of congenial persons; and where these groups
can be brought into the public school recreation center with its
library, gymnasium, piano and other activities, all under intelligent
guidance, a broad social development is possible. The church clubs,
settlement clubs and benevolent societies have their normal membership;
but it is more difficult than can be realized by those who have never
tried, to bring the other group into this environment. It is a group
that needs to be provided for in the community social scheme, and other
communities have found that the schoolhouse recreation center best cares
for it.
Evening recreation centers for adults have been established in other
cities at little expense. Once the work of organizing and equipping them
is accomplished, their work goes on almost of itself.
Wherever evening schools, recreation centers, playgrounds, vacation
schools and other activities connected with the public school system
have been established it is becoming more and more apparent that
measures making for social betterment are nowhere else so effectively
applied as in the public schools. Here is the most democratic of all our
institutions—the place where, with a compulsory education law carefully
enforced, 100 per cent. of the coming generation of citizens may be
reached.
The result of the sub-committee’s investigation of parks showed that all
were inadequately lighted, with an occasional concert forming the only
entertainment offered. Open pavilions in the parks, with public dances
under proper supervision ought to be an ideal means of fighting the
dance hall evil in Honolulu. Since the recent passing of an ordinance
regulating dance halls there has been little activity among them, the
most notorious remaining closed. It is thought that they will soon
reopen, and the volunteer supervisors which the ordinance provides will,
it is to be feared, find themselves faced with a difficult problem. A
dance hall ordinance cannot be made really effective unless an
argus-eyed person is on the premises continuously every night until it
is learned which managers are to be trusted to abide by the law. This
has been the invariable experience elsewhere.
The Settlements, Missions and other organizations are assisting several
hundred men and a few women to learn English in classes conducted for
the most part in crowded quarters, and taught by workers who have many
other duties which are in consequence neglected.
The large number in attendance at these classes, the fact that several
Japanese classes are self-supporting and that Hawaiians are attending a
class intended for Chinese only, proves a healthy demand for
instruction.
Hawaii owes a peculiar debt to its foreign element—to its Portuguese,
Spanish, Porto Rican and Filipino population especially, who are brought
from their native land to perform the work of the country, but have no
opportunity to learn its language. Their children sometimes grow up to
working age with only the slightest knowledge of English.
If it is necessary for private philanthropy to aid in establishing night
classes in English, there are surely few better ways in which money
could be expended. In New York the first classes in English for
immigrants were started on the lower East Side thirteen years ago, by
private philanthropy, and six years later were taken over by the Board
of Education. Day classes were also maintained for immigrant children,
who were thus enabled to enter school with a working knowledge of
English.
Afternoon classes which household servants might be able to attend, and
to which could also be sent the children who were backward in their
studies because of lack of English, should prove valuable in Honolulu.
The Department of Education should not, however, be urged to undertake
any of this work until every child in the Territory has been provided
with school accommodations.
A study made under the auspices of the Bureau of Municipal Research in
the recent New York School Inquiry of the Board of Estimate and
Apportionment of that city, brought out the fact that there were 76
agencies offering “direct, continuous and gratuitous co-operation” to
the public schools. These agencies included the Public Schools Athletic
League, teaching the folk-dancing to the children at the recreation
centers; visiting-teachers—the friendly visitor from the school to the
home—supplied by the Public Education Association, church societies,
etc.; vacation schools for backward children started by the Association
for Improving the Condition of the Poor and later taken over by the
Board of Education; and numerous other activities, supported by
independent agencies.
“Helping School Children,” by Miss Elsa Denison, published by Harper &
Brother, and Perry’s “Wider Use of the School Plant” published by the
Russell Sage Foundation, describes the successful ways in which
communities have used the school plant, and in this manner filled their
needs without erecting expensive and unnecessary buildings.
IWILEI AND THE WORKERS
(_Observations made at visits during the lunch hour and in the
evening, to the stockades immediately adjoining the canneries,
where the social evil has its generally recognized being in
Honolulu._)
Up the long lane from the railroad station and past the penitentiary;
then some tumbledown sheds in the last stages of decay but occupied by
human beings; next a few cottages, reasonably well-kept and attractive,
all of them rented for immoral purposes. Then the canneries themselves.
But up this road, almost half a mile long, must come the women and girls
who work in the three establishments offering practically all the work
obtainable in Honolulu by unskilled workers. The only alternative to
this route is the unsafe one across the railroad tracks. Not only must
the workers come this way, but they must return home either through this
district—meeting and being accosted by soldiers and citizens on their
way to the dives—or else they must cross the railroad tracks, almost
always after dark, with dim light down the alley and no light at all
across the tracks.
Immediately beyond the canneries lies the remainder of the Iwilei
district—running up almost to the cannery gates. In this section are the
only lunch rooms available for the cannery employes. The girls and women
must either come here, or must bring their lunch, or purchase the sweet
rolls, cakes, candy and soda water which are the only refreshments sold
by the Japanese who bring their lunch wagons to the cannery premises at
noon and in the evening. Either course means a cold meal after five
hours of work, with no place to sit down and eat it.
The restaurants of the district are surprisingly clean and all owned by
Chinese. They fill to their capacity a few moments after 12 o’clock with
men and women, boys and girls, of all nationalities. The bill of fare
varies from coffee and rolls for five cents to a dinner:—a bowl of soup
with bread, accompanied by an egg or a plate of stew, for fifteen cents.
A Chinese woman and a child—a girl about ten years old—shared a ten cent
plate of rice and stew. Men and girls chaffed one another familiarly.
A tall, bony Korean made his lunch of coffee and sweet rolls. He said he
had had the same thing for breakfast, before starting work at 7 o’clock,
but sometimes varied this menu with a bowl of milk. He got his dinner at
a restaurant in town for ten cents. He said he was working his way
through school.
In another restaurant a Porto Rican woman sat in the corner smoking a
cigarette. She spoke no English. Her neighbor at table was a young
Hawaiian woman—an ex-teacher—who told us she had married and given up
her school; but her husband earned only $35 a month driving a baker’s
wagon, so she worked during the canning season. This particular
restaurant stands between two of the most notorious resorts in the
district.
As we left, a small, thin Hawaiian girl was about to enter the shop to
buy a sweet to finish lunch. She and her grandmother worked together in
one of the canneries. She had earned $4.50 the week previous. She said
she was sixteen years old, but she did not look fourteen. Her
grandmother, between canning seasons, earns $3 a week packing coffee.
The grandfather has asthma and cannot work. The girl said they had only
poi for each of their three meals, sometimes with a little dried fish or
an onion for flavoring.
The women of the district, when asked about the cannery girls’ presence
in the district, spontaneously expressed the opinion that “it was wrong
for the little ones to come here.” They said keepers of houses in the
district frequently accosted the girls in the restaurants; but they had
not seen any of the girls go into the houses.
One of the women told us of a little Filipino wife, only fifteen years
old, who worked in the cannery with her husband; but he had been sick
and when the baby came they had no furniture and there was no money to
provide the necessaries for either mother or child. “And so” said M——
“we women just got together and made the baby clothes, and got her a bed
and some things. Why,” she added shamefacedly, “you’d have thought it
was a sewing circle, to look at us.”
We saw what I was told is a very rare thing indeed—a pure-blooded
Hawaiian girl in one of the resorts. We spoke to her, and the Humane
Officer, who was with me, and who spoke her native tongue, said the girl
appeared to be weakminded.
The suggestion was offered by the foreman at one of the canneries that
if a serious effort were made the district might be turned into a
community of workingmen’s cottages. This seems a much more likely way of
cleaning up the industrial district at any rate, than any process of law
would be likely to lead to. If this could be done, and a club house
established where hot luncheons would be served and a rest-room
provided, it would indeed be replacing figs for thistles. No more
promising place for establishing a basis for relationship with the girls
who work in the canneries could be wished for than would be afforded by
such a center.
THE WORKERS
_HAWAIIAN._
The wage-earning Hawaiian has, as the kindly French saying goes, the
faults of his qualities. Naturally gay and pleasure-loving he has
worked, fished, swam, sang and feasted his way through life as he
listed, and it is only a generation since he took his rest with equal
ease on the shores of his beloved ocean or beneath the boughs of the hau
tree. Luaus and hulas were frequent and Hawaiian hospitality is still
proverbial. He has never learned to say “no” to whomsoever may be the
latest comer.
Each man had the grant of his own kuleana, with a taro-field on the
mountainside or up in the valley where the showers are frequent and a
place to fish on the seashore. The newly prepared taro-field yielded
first its wild crop of popolo; and cocoanuts, guavas, yams, mountain
apples, water lemons and breadfruit were his for the gathering.
Large numbers of the natives have now, however, almost wantonly
mortgaged, sold or given away their property. The temptation has been
great to lease the acre or acre and a half constituting their little
domain, to the Japanese or Chinese gardeners at $40 or $50 annually, and
then borrow small sums from their tenants, until some morning they wake
and find themselves no longer in possession.
Hundreds of families, too, still live on the lands of their old chiefs
or of the kamaaina families, who pay the taxes. So long as they live
they may remain there, raising their taro, flowers, chickens and pigs.
The fishing of commerce has passed into the hands of the Japanese but a
man’s own “catch” is sufficient for himself and family.
This “family” is apt to be made up of all his unattached friends and
relatives, male and female, less well-off than himself, who sometimes
pay for at any rate their food by a donation of a proportion of the
family necessities in poi or canned meats or fish. Others, however, pay
nothing at all. The thrifty, hardworking man is, therefore, often
heavily handicapped. The more thoughtful of the older Hawaiians say that
the next ten years must bring a change: mortgages contracted with no
thought of repayment (sometimes the money has been borrowed to give a
luau) will fall due; competition for work will increase; and while the
head of the house may at the present time be earning a comfortable
living as a carpenter, a blacksmith, a painter, or a longshoreman, etc.,
a man in the next generation, with his rent to pay, will find that his
hospitality and even his ability to care for his immediate family may be
curtailed. This of course in the event of his pursuing his present
improvident way.
The Hawaiian home—the wage-earner’s home—varies so that it is
difficult to form any judgment of the economic status of the occupant.
A tenement room, by its bareness, is apt to give an impression of
extreme poverty which the facts in the case do not warrant. Cottages
of well-to-do natives frequently have no furnishings but a lauhala mat
on the floor and portraits of departed kings and queens on the wall.
On the other hand, one happens on a heavily upholstered,
gilt-picture-framed-center-table-with-the-family-Bible house which
brings one back to the East Side of New York City with scarcely a jar.
The native menu is simple; one full meal a day is the rule; coffee and
bread or simply a bowl of poi constituting the other two. The omission
of a meal or two now and then troubles the Hawaiian not at all. Poi,
fish, fruit, with an occasional indulgence in yams, taro-top-greens and
pork or chicken, forms the usual bill of fare.
The holoku is still the almost universal dress of the native women. The
missionary who had this sartorial inspiration was a true artist, for no
other garment could give the touch of stateliness and dignity to the
almost invariably full Hawaiian figure that in American attire might
well be awkward and ungainly.
The native girl of pure Hawaiian blood is generally large-boned, but
slender—even to daintiness when there is a mixture of some other
blood—with flashing eyes and a profusion of long, black hair, almost
always with threads of grey before the twentieth year is reached. Her
teeth are even and white and she laughs a great deal, particularly when
she tells you that father or mother has joined the Mormons—not father
_and_ mother—a procedure which is becoming more and more common, and
which for some reason not yet made apparent, always affords the other
members of the family much amusement.
Employers say generally that Hawaiian girls, while amiable and amenable,
have not the energy and push necessary to make them thoroughly
efficient. There is a general impression that they are irresponsible,
and that good fishing weather, a family luau or a fancied offense are
each one by itself or collectively sufficient reason for discontinuing
business relations. An examination, however, which was made of the time
books in three distinct occupations—a cannery, a laundry and a wholesale
house, showed an almost clean record for married women and girls alike,
so far as absences were concerned. With the exception of a day here and
there—far less than the average of absences elsewhere—the four months
covered showed steady work. The girls are prompt, employers say, in
coming to work in the morning, but are apt to dawdle before settling
down to their occupation both in the morning and after the lunch period.
In a number of instances, it was found that work had been given up and
employment changed because pay envelopes had been short several hours’
time, in spite of the fact that in every case the mistake had been
corrected when called to the foreman’s attention.
None of the women or girls spoken with had any complaints to make
concerning their work. Although limping painfully after a week of
standing from seven in the morning until seven or eight o’clock at
night—often their first experience with any sort of occupation—they
stoutly maintained that they were not tired.
Managers of both canneries and laundries say that they have no
difficulty in securing Hawaiian girls. An advertisement for help always
brings more applicants than there are positions, except during the few
heaviest weeks of the canning season.
One tender-hearted proprietor said he never advertised because he
couldn’t bear to disappoint the girls; but always secured new workers
through those he already employed. Boardinghouse keepers tell of girls
who waited on the table and did chambermaid’s work during the summer to
pay for their books at Normal school.
Among the most ubiquitous and characteristic of the native workers—the
lei-makers and vendors—one finds few young girls. Perhaps this is
because of the problem peculiar to the Hawaiian girl in Honolulu, which
is created for the most part by her inheritance. The echo of the old
Hawaiian traditions of hospitality, or perhaps a phase of that same
hospitality which now finds expression in welcoming the stranger to her
native land, tends to give the less carefully trained native girl an
unreserve that, combined with a genuinely sweet and friendly nature, too
often causes her to fall an easy victim to men who regard her as
legitimate prey. The large transient element and especially the numbers
of soldiers quartered on the island, make it actually unsafe for a girl
to go about her business unmolested unless she is possessed of unusual
force of character.
But in spite of this, and in spite too of the fact that the problem of
subsistence has not yet become acute for the Hawaiians in Honolulu, a
large number of the native women and girls, with the awakening of new
desires—whether for more wearing apparel, more amusement, more
education, or more opportunity—are becoming serious workers.
There is no question but that a large factor in the reason for Hawaiian
girls entering the wage-earning field will be found in the fact that
numbers of them are the illegitimate daughters of white men who have
made no provision for either them or their mothers. Unmarried mothers
are almost, without exception, taken care of with their babies by their
own families, and it is difficult to make them think seriously of the
future of the fatherless little one, since they are themselves still so
close to the promiscuity in sex relations of the early Hawaiian days.
This type of girl, however, is by no means to be considered
representative of that portion of the race which has had opportunity and
careful training; and the mother of numerous illegitimate children is
likely to be most careful of her daughter’s upbringing and conduct.
_JAPANESE._
The kimonoed figures of the Japanese women and girls shambling gaily
along form an attractive part of Honolulu’s street life. Here they enjoy
a social liberty undreamed of in their native land, and the taste of it
may be said to have gone to their heads. Few young women even of the
economically independent families are held to the rigid regime which
Japanese custom prescribes; and while here and there a girl comes
through her school course with the same ideals of freedom which the
American girl has come to accept as a matter of course, on the majority
of Japanese girls it has had a much more violent reaction.
They are the fighters among the women wage-earners of the city, as are
the men among those of their own sex, although ably seconded in this
respect by the Spanish. The latter, however, are present in such small
numbers that they do not play an important part in the life of the city.
The Japanese who come to Hawaii are almost entirely peasants and speak a
patois. As wage-earners they have bettered themselves immeasurably.
Those with whom I have spoken are enthusiastic about the opportunity
here. They are slowly drawing away from the plantations and are
concentrating in the pineapple fields and small truck farms near the
city. A number of them told me that the discrepancy between the cost of
living and wages in Japan was rapidly bringing about an acute condition
of affairs—that women and girls were being ground up like chaff in the
industrial enterprises of their native land.
One finds few Japanese families in the tenements, the majority of small
shopkeepers living in the cottages back of their stores. The tenements
have their quota of Japanese, of course, but this is almost entirely
made up of single men or of couples newly married.
The generation which has been educated in the public schools—as well as
in their own Japanese schools for the children attend both—is highly
spoken of by both instructors and employers. Their privilege to vote
will make their dual citizenship a matter which will soon require final
adjustment.
The women who are entering now come as picture brides; and whereas a
generation ago few Japanese children were born in Hawaii, abortionists
abounded among them, the past five years has brought a change and
families of at least moderate size are now the rule and are found in
every part of the community, characteristically assimilating everything
educational and commercial.
In the Japanese, as in the Chinese home, one fails to find the supposed
rice and tea diet of the Oriental family. Unlike the Chinese
wage-earners’ families who eat no vegetables but rice and the dried
mushrooms from the Orient, the Japanese are very fond of cabbage,
turnips, and all kinds of beans, and eat a great deal of all, as well as
of rice. Fish, fresh or dried, is also a favorite article of food.
The women are not strong physically, but perform hard and exhausting
work, keeping up through sheer force of spirit—the national philosophy:
Bushido.
_CHINESE._
Only since the breaking up of the old dynasty and the establishment of
the republic—with its votes for women—have Chinese girls and women
become wage-earners outside of the home. Their entrance into the
occupations has been effected by a phalanx of women and girls of all
ages, from the grandmother of fifty or more down to seven and eight year
old children.
The wives and daughters of the merchant class are still at home, many of
them being “shut in” on reaching their fourteenth year until their
marriage to an unknown man—the eminently practical Chinese way of
dealing with the “silly age.” Even these shut-in girls, however, are
coming to sewing classes at the Mission schools to learn English and
sewing. But why teach them to make Irish crochet bags and embroidered
linen center pieces when their own beautiful Chinese embroideries are so
much asked for in the Chinese shops by tourists?
The wives and daughters of the skilled and unskilled working men are
finding their way into every sort of occupation, and everywhere they are
making enviable records for themselves for ability, intelligence and
reliability. Within the next five years the Japanese woman will have a
strong competitor—one who by her training and inheritance will perhaps
bring about a higher standard of stability as well as habits of work.
The Chinese employer finds it more economical to pay his men $20 a month
and to feed them well himself, rather than pay him a somewhat more
advanced wage and take the risk of his being sufficiently well fed at
home to maintain his working efficiency. Clerks in the smaller Chinese
shops, carpenters employed by Chinese builders, painters, etc., are
therefore paid in this manner, and their families must bear the
resulting hardships. Four or five children mean that the wife must also
be a wage-earner, and the children too as soon as they are old
enough—often before. But although a rice and tea diet is popularly
supposed to prevail among the Chinese of this class, the only family I
found subsisting on such a diet was doing so because the father had had
a long illness and was paying off a debt he had contracted.
A trip through the tenements at dinner time revealed nothing more simple
than a bowl of rice crowned by a plump portion of fish, which was being
absorbed by a group of children in one of the alleys. Other kitchens
showed pots of stewed mushrooms, soy, green salad, or fish; but always
accompanied by a bowl of rice, and of course, a pot of tea.
The tenement rooms of the Chinese families are the most attractive of
any seen. The furnishings are simple, and there are always pots of
flowers and ferns at the door. The women are friendly, and chat freely
of their affairs so far as vocabulary will permit. Next door, however,
one may find a bare room occupied by two or three men who have no
families; and two or three hours later they will be there gambling and
opium-smoking, breaking up the cheerful homelike aspect of the place.
In the cottages, which were often occupied by two families, the women
were watering their garden patches, complaining the while that their
“men too much long work, no home.” These are the wives of the clerks in
the larger shops, or of merchants. Women from the adjoining cottages
came to their doors and nodded a smiling greeting. All of them are much
interested in the suffrage movement which under the leadership of
prominent Hawaiian women is agitating Honolulu, and all vehemently say
that they “laik work.”
The girls and women for the most part still wear their comfortable,
becoming native costume of blue or lavender cotton; and the former
especially are exceedingly attractive, with their bright faces, slender
bodies and long thick braids of black hair.
Prostitution and sex immorality is almost unknown and even the
polygamous household is falling into disfavor, especially with the
second wives.
It will be interesting to note what their emancipation will bring to the
coming generation.
_PORTUGUESE._
The Portuguese form quite a distinct element in the community. It is
curious, in discussing races in Hawaii, to hear “Portuguese and White”
written and spoken of. The fact that there are a number of families of
the Cape Verde or black Portuguese type in Hawaii has tended to
differentiate the Portuguese as a whole.
Their presence here is wholly artificial, brought about by the assisted
immigration program of the Sugar Planters’ Association; and they are the
favorite workers on the best plantations. Once a Portuguese decides to
remain in the country he loses no time in acquiring literally his own
“vine and fig tree.”
This nationality shows the strongest contrasts of any in Honolulu, being
at once the most thrifty, the largest alms-asking, the most efficient
working and most hopelessly offending child laboring and school evading
element in the population. A logical explanation is offered by their
Consul who lays the blame for the mendicancy on the Portuguese nabobs
who became millionaires by exploiting the natives in Brazil, and then
returned to their own country and made their peace with God by endowing
Portugal with every sort of eleemosynary institution possible to create.
Their thrift is the result of the habit of work centuries old, while the
ingrained habit which fathers of all civilized nations have of raising
large families and retiring from work to live on their children’s
earnings at the earliest feasible time is one of the principal factors
everywhere in making child labor laws a necessity. Not until there are
sufficient school accommodations in Honolulu will the truant officer
have an adequate basis for enforcing the compulsory school attendance
law.
The girls and women are well liked by employers. They are reserved and
have a hint of melancholy in their temperament which is quite foreign to
other workers in Honolulu.
Portuguese families are almost a rarity in the tenement houses. The
meanest sort of cottage is preferred by them, where they may cultivate
their own vegetables and raise their own chickens.
While the majority of the immigrants came from the same social class,
many nice distinctions have sprung up with the passing of years and the
acquiring of new standards, and it is therefore impossible to
characterize the Portuguese population or even the Portuguese
wage-earners in Honolulu as a whole, with anything like the definiteness
distinguishing the workers of other races.
_TEACHERS._
Honolulu’s teaching force, like its population, includes representatives
of the four corners of the earth:
American 100
Hawaiian or Part Hawaiian 32
British 10
Chinese 7
Portuguese 6
German 1
Japanese 1
Other Foreigners 6
——
163
These are all first-grade certificate teachers, earning salaries of from
$600 to $1,000 a year. Teachers are on duty five days in the week, from
9 a. m. until 2 p. m., and the school year is nine months, with a total
of three months’ vacation. The salary schedule is substantially the same
as in other communities of this size, but the school day is shorter by
two hours than it is on the mainland. The community is paying its
teachers for their eighth year of service $75 a month—about the same pay
a stenographer receives at the end of her first year’s work, with an
even greater scarcity in supply, and a far more urgent need. Teachers
here, as indeed they do everywhere, complain of the small pay, and those
spoken with expressed a preference for longer hours and more pay.
A number of teachers were spoken to with reference to the wide
discrepancy between the social and community aspect of the public and
private school work in Honolulu. It was suggested that a teacher’s
institute would do much to stimulate such activity, by giving
opportunity for the interchange of thought among the teachers in
Honolulu and those from other sections of the Islands who have a
considerable amount of social activity with their school work.
This would seem to be an admirable plan, and the steamship companies
might be induced to grant special rates for such an occasion so that
attendance would not be an unduly heavy financial burden. Reduced
transportation is usually obtained for teachers’ conferences.
A number of the teachers were interested in the question of getting into
closer touch with the children in their homes, and are planning to meet
the parents at an early date.
There are only six teachers on the waiting list at present while on the
other hand groups of children of school age continue to be seen on every
block during school hours. Either the required accommodations are not
yet provided, or else the compulsory law is not being enforced.
In the private schools there are forty women teachers receiving salaries
ranging from $450 to $1,500 a year, and living expenses. In several
instances salaries are not paid for the summer vacation; but teachers
have the privilege of living at the school without expense.
While the maximum salary is greater than in the public schools, the
private school work includes a comprehensive social program noted in the
chapter on “Public Amusements,” which calls for much service outside of
school hours.
The Territorial Teachers’ Association could do much if it would interest
itself in the social problems of the city. Sociologists are coming to
agree that in last analysis the teacher and the policeman are the forces
which may be regarded as capable of becoming the strongest bulwarks of
social betterment. Some place the policeman’s opportunity first; but in
considering Honolulu’s problems I should say that the teacher might at
any rate be entitled to equal consideration.
_NURSES._
There is a wide divergence of opinion in the community concerning the
question of nurses and where the supply ought to come from. At present
there are about thirty-five private nurses officially registered at the
Sanitorium, who earn $25 and $30 a week. This number, I am told, fairly
supplies the normal demand in Honolulu; but the nurses come and go, and
not half a dozen have ties which make them an integral part of the
community.
Queen’s Hospital employs regularly sixteen nurses at $50 a month and
living expenses, and a head nurse at $75 a month and living expenses.
This means an expense of $875 a month. A hospital of this size located
in a community of the type of Honolulu should be able at an expense of
$250 a month and living expenses for a superintendent of nurses and an
assistant, to train a class of fifteen girls at no cost to the community
other than their living expenses and about $150 a month of an allowance
for their uniforms, books, etc.
Native girls who have taken hospital training on the mainland are not
only giving the best of satisfaction but are earning salaries far higher
than it would be possible for them to secure in any other way.
The corps of district nurses, who receive salaries of $90 a month and
have continuous work, is constantly receiving additions, and the demand
for this class of help in various institutions is constantly increasing.
As at present organized the three separate hospitals, Queen’s, the
Children’s and the Maternity Home represent an outlay for plant and
running expenses which might easily be materially lessened. A
consolidation of the Maternity Home and the Children’s Hospital would
not only be an economy, but would give both institutions an opportunity
to give thorough training to a corps of children’s nurses, as well as to
give maternity and children’s diseases practice to nurses taking
training at Queen’s Hospital. Such a course is customary in other
cities.
If the consolidation could be effected and a resident physician placed
in charge, it would not only place both institutions on a higher basis,
but would leave the supervising nurse free to train the proposed nursing
classes. This would mean to subscribers to both institutions an
opportunity for truly efficient giving—which in turn means the
consideration of community needs first, last and always; and making a
dollar perform 100 per cent of its work.
Only recently while visiting a family in Camp 2, a young baby fell from
the second story porch and struck its head in falling. Owing to the
necessity for immediate medical attendance it was impossible to take it
to the Children’s Hospital, and the child had to be rushed down to
Queen’s Hospital.
I know of nothing that is better worth doing in the community than
making these changes in the hospital regime, and instituting a course of
training for nurses. If the matter were given newspaper publicity young
women of the city would undoubtedly furnish good material for the
classes.
_STENOGRAPHERS._
A circular letter sent to eighty-eight representative employers of
stenographers in Honolulu, supplemented by further personal inquiry,
indicates that there are about 100 women stenographers employed in the
city at present, at salaries from the $40 or $60 a month usually paid to
beginners, up to $100 and $150 paid those having experience from a year
to eight, ten and twelve years. Over 50 per cent of the salaries range
between $100 and $135 a month, and the average for all is $90 a month.
As compared with mainland salaries this average is unusually high, but
on the other hand the average of ability is higher and reports indicate
that the stenographers in Honolulu have a generally higher level of
school training than is reached in communities where numerous commercial
schools, accepting pupils of any grade of intelligence who can be
persuaded to take their course, have flooded the market with a supply of
incompetents willing to work for any wage.
There are only three complaints of incapability, two of them being on
account of lack of English, and one for lack of concentration. The
others reported not capable or expert have not yet had a year’s
experience, and could not reasonably be expected to have reached their
full efficiency.
Vacations with pay range from one week to a month, and a number of firms
allow two or three months every three years, presumably for the trip to
the mainland to tone up, which is a general custom in the islands.
Hours range almost uniformly from 9 a. m. to five p. m.
There is no public stenographic office in Honolulu. Transients and
others who have occasional work are dependent on securing an unemployed
stenographer haphazard, or having work done in the evening or on Sunday.
This works to the disadvantage of both employer and employe, for while
the latter may and in some cases does double her regular salary by
overtime work, yet the strain on her physique, and especially on her
eyes inevitably brings bad results.
Successful stenographers elsewhere make the largest earnings in this
field of work, and veritable fortunes have been piled up by some of the
large offices who make a specialty of reporting conventions, legislative
inquiries, meetings, etc.
A capable stenographer should have High School training or its
equivalent; unless exceptionally equipped with English. Even then High
School English is desirable and a fund of general information is a
valuable asset to those qualifying for secretarial positions. Of the
thirty-four stenographers reported as trained in Honolulu, all but eight
have such training, which undoubtedly has much to do with the high
average of ability.
Seventeen of the entire number reported are Hawaiian or Hawaiian with
mixed blood. Nine of the seventeen Hawaiian stenographers are receiving
from $900 to $1,600 a year, and have from one to eleven years’
experience. In general their wages average as high or a little higher
than those paid other nationalities. The only salaries departing from a
normal scale as compared with salaries paid in Honolulu are $10 a week
paid a Japanese stenographer in a law office, which is below the average
paid for the same length of experience in this class of work; and the
salary paid a stenographer in the office of an engineering firm, which
is low both for the field of work and for the amount of experience
shown. Both stenographers are pronounced capable by their employers.
The nationalities shown in the order of their numerical importance are:
American, Hawaiian, British or Canadian, Portuguese, Portuguese-German,
Half-White, (Hawaiian and white), Norwegian-American, Hawaiian-Chinese,
Hawaiian-French, Japanese.
It is perhaps too much to expect private teachers to confine their
instruction to pupils whose English will qualify them to become
efficient stenographers, but if English is found deficient additional
instruction should at any rate be suggested. If a stenographer is
hopelessly incompetent in English it has often been found possible to
persuade her of the inconvenience her incompetence is causing her
employer, and of the ill-effect on herself of wasting effort that in
another field might make her services valuable. Employers can themselves
do much by speaking frankly with a girl in this respect.
Here, too, a vocational bureau would be exceptionally valuable, and
would tend to maintain the present satisfactory condition of the
stenographic field from the standpoint both of ability of the workers
and the pay they receive.
In view of the training required, and of the nature of the work
performed, the salaries paid in Honolulu are not high; but they are high
when compared with those paid in mainland cities where the field is
overcrowded with girls unequipped with the proper qualifications but
eager to make for themselves a position which is considered practically
at the top of the wage-earners’ scale from a social point of view.
SHOPS AND STORES
The five dry-goods shops employ an aggregate of about seventy-five
saleswomen, made up of an equal number of Americans and Portuguese, with
a sprinkling of Hawaiians and Germans.
The rooms are large, no artificial light is used, and there are no
basement salesrooms.
The working day commences at 7:45 in the morning and closes at 5 o’clock
in the afternoon. There is an hour’s allowance for lunch.
Three of the shops close at noon on Saturday for four months of the
year, and two at 1 o’clock during June, July and August. One shop has
reopened from 7 to 9 o’clock Saturday evenings, but the proprietor says
it has not paid and that he intends discontinuing the practice the first
of the year. There are no fines or penalties except censure or dismissal
for incompetence. There are rules, however, to insure courtesy to
customers and systematic methods of salesmanship. The lowest salary paid
beginners is $2.50. They are advanced with reasonable rapidity, one shop
raising wages from $2.50 to $5.00 for a year’s service in one instance;
and from $3.50 to $7.50 in seven months in another. One manager employs
none but experienced help and has no saleswoman earning less than $9.00.
Another has a minimum wage of $5.00, raising it to $6.00 after a month’s
trial. He says if a girl does not earn a $6.00 rate within a month he
does not wish to employ her.
A list of sixty-nine salaries verified as correct by employers and
employes is as follows:
WEEKLY.
1 at $ 3.50
1 at 4.00
5 at 5.00
2 at 6.00
5 at 7.00
1 at 7.50
10 at 8.00
2 at 9.00
8 at 10.00
1 at 11.00
5 at 12.00
3 at 12.50
9 at 15.00
4 at 20.00
1 at 25.00
1 at 40.00
MONTHLY.
2 at $ 75.00
1 at 85.00
3 at 100.00
3 at 125.00
Two weeks’ vacation with pay is given by three shops; and a week with
pay by the other two.
A number of the saleswomen are married. One who left her position when
she married went back to it after a long illness of her husband left
them in straitened circumstances, and she has remained at work ever
since. She has no children and says she “feels safer for her old age.”
Most of the girls say simply they are working to earn a living, and they
“like this way of doing it.”
The best paid employes are from “the coast”—some from New York—those
earning $15.00 or less a week being Honolulans.
All the managers agree that native girls are desirable saleswomen, but
that they lack energy. One manager said he would like to employ more
native girls if he could secure efficient ones, because of their
amiability.
There are a fair number of openings for new employes in the shops each
year—from fifteen to twenty in all—and each manager has a waiting list.
The requirements are: a fair knowledge of arithmetic, a good appearance
and good English. The saleswomen are not required to wear black because
of the heat; but there is little extreme dressing, and the general tone
of the shops is exceedingly good. Perhaps it will not be out of place to
say a word in regard to the surprisingly quick time in which new styles
reach Honolulu shops. All the buying is done in New York, and in general
an excellent stock of goods is carried.
In the book, florist, jewelry, curio and art shops, and in the various
stores, there are about 100 young women employed, some of whom combine
office duties, bookkeeping or stenography with selling in the shop. The
wages vary from $5.00 a week—paid the small Chinese beginner of
fifteen—who has here clothed herself in American garb—to $85.00 a month
for years of experience and a multiplicity of duties. The average wage
is from $10.00 to $12.00 a week, and the majority of the saleswomen are
Spanish, Portuguese and Irish. The restaurants employ girls as cashiers,
but there are no waitresses.
These clerkships afford excellent employment for untrained girls with
good manners, a good appearance and average intelligence, and during the
winter season an extra force is maintained in practically all the shops.
SEAMSTRESSES AND NEEDLEWOMEN
The seamstress investigation developed two interesting facts: i. e.,
that the supply of workers is not keeping pace with the demand; and that
the seamstresses at present available are for the most part
self-trained.
A circular sent to 250 women who have households in Honolulu brought 110
replies, of which 8 stated that no seamstress was employed because of
scarcity or inefficiency; 78 employed a seamstress regularly in periods
varying from one week to eleven months, but for the most part from three
to six weeks in the year. Of these more than half complained either of
incompetence or slowness. Seamstresses who had served with dressmakers
were the best paid and most satisfactory; but they formed a small group
of only eleven. The majority were found satisfactory for plain sewing,
but incapable of planning work, or incompetent in execution.
The remarks in reports are generally as follows:
“Satisfactory if watched.”
“I have been able to get only one girl, who is entirely untrained,
though willing.”
“Competent for plain sewing and mending.”
“Competent for plain work.”
“For very plain sewing and mending her work is very neat.”
“Qualified for plain sewing; not to cut or fit.”
“I do not employ any at present, as I have found all I have tried
incapable or unreliable.”
Forty-eight report paying from $2.00 to $3.00 a day, which always
includes lunch, and often breakfast and carfare. The remainder paying
$1.00, $1.50 and $1.75 a day. There is an opportunity in this field for
a number—perhaps fifty—competent workers.
The day is as a rule eight and a half hours long, beginning at eight in
the morning and ending at five in the afternoon. No one nationality can
be said to give more satisfactory service than another, although the
Portuguese are by far the most numerous. The reports cover:
57 Portuguese
15 Hawaiians or part Hawaiians
2 Negresses
2 Norwegians
1 Russian
1 American
—
78
Five dressmakers employ about 30 girls, whom they pay from $3.00 to
$15.00 a week, the lower amount stated in each case as being paid to
apprentices. The dressmakers report eight and one-half hours a day, and
one states that she gives a half holiday on Saturday and extra pay for
overtime. The majority of the dressmakers’ assistants are Portuguese,
and these are considered the most efficient workers. A Japanese girl in
one shop is also giving satisfaction, but Hawaiians and half-Chinese are
not reported on favorably.
Japanese maids are in some instances being trained by their mistresses
as seamstresses, and several Japanese women are now going out by the
day, but none were reported in the investigation and no definite
information could be secured concerning them.
Girls working in other establishments, however, report ten and eleven
hours’ work, at low wages; and a shop manager who employs girls for
alterations states he has had complaints from dressmakers’ employes that
they did not receive their pay. In other instances they complained of
not being paid promptly.
This charge is a common one in the dressmaking business, the proprietors
of certain New York establishments saying their bills were neglected for
so long a period—some customers, usually women of wealth, paying their
bills only once in six months—that their own capital became exhausted.
Each of the department stores employs from one to three alteration
hands, who are paid from $10 to $15 a week, the former being the amount
paid two Hawaiian girls, who were considered by their employers to be
slower and less energetic than the Portuguese woman who received $15 a
week.
In the millinery shops the girls in the work rooms would be considerably
benefitted by a preliminary course in sewing. They now begin their
apprenticeship with no salary at all in two shops; a salary of from
$1.00 to $2.00 is paid where the apprentice also delivers parcels and
runs errands.
There are only a dozen or fifteen workers in the millinery shops, and it
does not seem worth while in this community to give a millinery course
for trade purposes.
There is a large demand for needlework, and the shops taking orders for
it and also having articles on sale, report a thriving business. The
workers earn very little, however, the average among a dozen women
talked with being from fifty to sixty cents a day, while some earn only
thirty cents. This is the usual state of affairs among the makers of
hand work, as indeed in most home industries. The shopkeepers say they
are handicapped by the fact that the same women who work for them also
work for private customers, and underbid them. One shop maintains that
it earns only a 10% commission and its stamping charges. Another shop
employs Portuguese women on plantations and says it not only pays their
fare into town when they come for work, but that work is often taken out
to the plantations at the shop’s expense. It was not possible to visit
any of these plantation workers and learn what they earn.
The work offered for sale in most of the shops indicates that training
in the designing and selecting of patterns would be desirable; and none
of the shops show the pillow laces, so well made as by the girls of the
Industrial School.
LEI MAKING AND LAUHALA WEAVING
The makers of leis—the beautiful garlands of carnations, ilima, ginger
or hydrangea interwoven with maile, forming the hat and neck-encircling
masses of fragrance and color which speed departing friends, or bedeck
luau and poi luncheon guests—enliven the street corners of the shopping
district at all times, sitting in the shade of nearby buildings with
their ti-leaf covered baskets by their sides, busily making the more
durable leis of paper, shell or seeds, and almost invariably discussing
suffrage. On steamer days the downtown districts and piers are alive
with men and women vendors of this most characteristic native ornament.
Usually the women of the family make the leis, the men cultivating the
flowers for their manufacture in the home garden patches. There are
perhaps two dozen of these women in Honolulu, each of whom has her
regular stand on one street corner or another. But the leis themselves
are made everywhere. A trip through a tenement block at eleven o’clock
at night disclosed an entire family, men, women, half-grown girls and
children,—eight in all,—asleep on the floor, while an older woman, an
aunt, sat on the floor in the farthest corner making yellow paper leis
for a suffrage meeting, by the light of an oil lamp. It is the most
general home occupation of the Hawaiian woman, and the lei itself in one
form or another, usually of red or yellow paper, decorate picture frames
and mantels at least in every other home one enters. It was found even
on the occasion of a visit to the high-perched cottage of a Black Forest
German iron-worker, married to a French woman from the Pyranees, who
owns a homestead at the head of one of the beautiful valleys, with an
outlook sweeping from the crest of one hill to the next, the sound of a
nearby waterfall always accompanying the soughing of the trade wind. The
crescent moon, accompanied by Venus, topped one of the hills as our host
settled himself back in his veranda chair and grunted comfortably: “I
think I don’t know any better place as Honolulu for a working man.—No?”
Lei making is evidently a profitable occupation. The vendors say that
the usual receipts are $9.00 a day on steamer days, and from $2.00 to
$3.00 or $4.00 on other days. It is taught by the older Hawaiian women
to the next generation, and I fancy any newcomer to the ranks would have
much the same sort of fight for place as would a newsboy on a rival’s
route.
The garlands sell at twenty-five cents each, and the blossoms are either
gathered up in the hills or are raised at home. Only one lei-maker
talked with purchased any of her flowers. She said she bought about half
her supply from a Japanese gardener.
* * * * *
Lauhala weaving is a passing native industry, and while mats, fans and
pillow-covers are found in the curio shops, dealers and some of the
older Hawaiians say that the rush to turn land into pineapple and sugar
cultivation has eradicated the lauhala until it is not now obtainable in
any quantity sufficient for commercial uses, from every island but
Molokai.
The mats, of a soft, light tan color, are the ideal covering for
bungalow floors. They are woven in inch or two-inch squares, and have a
dull, satiny finish that is very attractive. They are scrubbed with soap
and water, and the lauhala fiber may be preserved indefinitely for
mending purposes, if moistened with water occasionally.
There is undoubtedly a good local market for these mats, and their
beauty and durability ought to make them popular elsewhere if a
sufficient supply of raw material were guaranteed. Most of those in use
here are made to order, although a few of the shops have a small stock
for sale.
The training of a corps of workers in this industry and an organized
plan for marketing the product in the furniture and dry-goods shops
might convince property owners that here is an additional opportunity
for industry.
The Federal Bureau of Forestry and Agriculture says that lauhala will
grow on almost any sort of rocky land that would be available for no
other agricultural purpose; and that it requires very little moisture,
growing down almost to the sea in some places.
The weaving process is not laborious and can be carried on in the open
air. Patience and care are required, however, in selecting and
moistening the dried leaves for weaving.
If this industry could be placed on a sound basis it would not only give
continuous employment to a corps of workers, but would serve the
interesting purpose of keeping alive a characteristic folk-occupation.
Also, as Miss Addams has so often pointed out, in speaking of the
national museum of occupations in Hull House, the stimulation of the
workers’ respect for their own national occupations is always healthy.
COFFEE SORTING AND PACKING
Coffee sorting and packing employs between 60 and 70 women workers, the
former occupation lasting from October to June, and the latter all the
year round.
A number of the cannery employes find work here after the close of the
pineapple canning season.
The work is sorting coffee beans of two grades, the better grade paying
forty cents, the poorer grade fifty cents a hundred pounds.
Some of the experienced workers earn as high as $7.00 a week, but the
majority of credits on the time book are between $2.50 and $4.50 a week.
The hours are from 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., and the workroom is in a light,
airy, first-story room. Both the sorting and packing operations are
carried on seated, the workers being arranged in groups of two or three.
Here, as in the canneries, the majority of workers are Hawaiian, with
Japanese and Portuguese second and third in number. There are also Porto
Ricans and Filipinos, but the highest wages are earned by the Japanese.
The Hawaiian foreman is a great favorite, and he knows the intimate
personal history of all the workers—the Japanese girl who wishes to
learn English; the Hawaiian woman who was closely related to the victim
of the last white slave trial; the stout, but asthmatic and idle husband
of one of the women, who “always shows up on pay day.”
Coffee packing pays $3.00 to $5.00 a week, according to length of
service, the latter amount being paid after three years. I asked the
foreman if anyone was earning $5.00 now, and he said: “No, not since my
daughter left to be married.”
Few of the employes understand or speak any English, and it was
therefore not possible to converse with them.
LAUNDRIES
The 150 workers normally employed in Honolulu’s three steam laundries
are exempt from all the minor and some of the major ills which commonly
beset this class of wage-earners.
The greatest gain is perhaps in the all-year-round opening of doors and
windows, entirely obviating the collection of steam, gas fumes and other
impurities. Then, too, the fact that two laundries conduct their work
entirely on one floor removes the discomfort which ascending steam and
heat brings when the wash-room is in a basement or lower floor. The only
two-story laundry in the city has its wash-room on the second floor.
A test of all the power-driven machinery demonstrates that no more
effort than stepping down is required to operate any one of them:—a
great and welcome contrast with the exhausting work described in Miss
Butler’s “Women and the Trades” as performed by the Pittsburgh operators
of laundry machinery. To cite only one instance:
(1) _Pages 182-183._
“Cuff, neckband and yoke presses, and the wing point tipper for
collars, operate in the same way as the body ironers. The cuff is
placed over the saddle-shaped padded head; pressure of a treadle
raises the head against a steam chest and the pressure of another
treadle causes the head to drop back as the cuff is finished. Only
by violent exertion can hot metal and padded head be forced
together. By sheer physical effort, therefore, the operator presses
each cuff four times, twice on a side, and the whole body of the
girl is shaken by the force she is obliged to use. In one laundry
the manager said: ‘No American girl can stand this. We have to use
Hungarians or other foreigners. It seems to be unhealthful, but I
don’t know——’ Yet American girls do stand it. I have seen them
ironing at the rate of three cuffs a minute. The motion required for
operating the tipper is as violent as that of the old-style cuff
press, the pressure of either treadle requiring the utmost physical
effort, but in each case where I saw the machine in use the operator
was a young girl not over fifteen years of age, and she was white
with the strain.”
Another favorable feature characterizing the work in laundries here is
the shifting of occupation made possible in small establishments. While
one machine, a body-ironer for example,—on which 600 shirts may be
turned out in one day, each shirt requiring ten motions, making a total
of 6,000 motions of the arms and of the foot in operating the
treadle,—is operated by the right foot, the collar-presser is a
left-footed machine, and the girls are shifted from one machine to
another, so that the strain on one part of the body exclusively is
regulated. I asked one manager why this was not done in all laundries,
and he said the difficulty lay in the fact that union wage scales were
made for certain kinds of work; whereas he paid his employes by the
month, raising wages according to ability and length of service.
The fact that all the steam laundries are comparatively new has perhaps
been the reason why the newer machine models, obviating the strains
mentioned by Miss Butler, have been installed.
There is, however, the same tendency to exact long hours of work in
times of stress which is found everywhere in this business, one laundry
reporting 87 hours of overwork in one month during the tourist season,
making a thirteen-hour day, and as all work must be performed in a
standing posture, this strain is unduly severe. The customary overtime
is two evenings a week until nine or nine-thirty o’clock.
Work commences in all the laundries at seven or seven-thirty in the
morning and continues until five or five-thirty in the evening. Saturday
is usually a half holiday.
Processes are uniform in all the laundries. The bundle of laundry first
goes to the marker, who gives it its distinguishing family or personal
mark. It is then separated into white, colored and woolen articles,
after which it goes to the washer, and is boiled in the large vats
occupying one corner of the room. The washing is done by men—mostly
Chinese—with the exception of the woolens and fine pieces, which are
washed in another part of the room by the starch girls. The floors were
wet about the washing machines, but there was no standing water, the
drainage being good in all the laundries.
After the clothes are washed they are put into the drying machines, huge
metal vats with perforated inner baskets revolving rapidly and throwing
out the water by centrifugal force. Accidents have been reported in
other places caused by the uneven distribution of clothing in these
inner baskets, which breaks them under the great force with which they
revolve. They in turn cause the outer metal covering to break loose and
whirl into the workroom. There is no record of such an accident,
however, in Honolulu.
The clothes are next shaken out ready for the mangling or starching, and
on the shaking out process and mangling the beginners are started,
earning $3.50 to $5.00 a week, in one laundry; $3.00 to $4.50, in
another; and $17.00 a month in a third. In all the laundries an upright
board about six inches high is used to protect the hands of the
operators from being crushed between the rollers of the mangling
machines. These machines are near the corner where the washing is done,
and are constructed of framework supporting steam-heated metal rolls,
placed horizontally and covered with wool and canvas. Between these
rolls sheets, towels, napkins and other flat work receive their final
drying and pressing. Two operators work at either side of the roll on
sheets, table-cloths and other large pieces; but the smaller ones are
fed into the roller by one worker.
Here, as in all other processes, the motor is gauged to a low rate of
speed, for managers all agree that the girls cannot work as hard here as
they do on the mainland.
The starched pieces go from the drying machines to the starchers. The
starching is done by hand in two laundries and by machine in one. The
starch girls have a corner to themselves as a rule, with a sink for
washing fine pieces and flannels. The starching process, even when done
by machinery, is very simple, and the girls earn even less than the
mangle operators. They are paid from $3.00 to $4.50 a week, according to
length of service, in one laundry the head starcher receiving $20.00 a
month, after three years of service.
The drying-room, where the starched pieces are sent before being ironed,
is partitioned off from the main workroom, and in one case the process
is entirely automatic, the articles being suspended from the hooks of a
traveling chain and carried through the closed drying-room, which is
heated to a high degree, from which they are automatically dropped into
a basket for ironing. In the other two laundries the pieces are
suspended from a chain, drawn by the starch-girl into the drying-room,
in which they are left for a certain period of time and are then taken
out in the same manner.
The ironing is done by the most experienced workers, this being the last
stage of promotion, and the wages paid are from $1.00 a day to $35.00 a
month and overtime. It is possible with overtime to earn $10.00 a week,
about a dozen women in all reaching this figure, but the most common
rate of pay for the normal day is $1.00, with an unpaid-for half-day on
Saturday, averaging $5.50 a week for a ten-hour day. One laundry pays
$35.00 a month to its most experienced workers for a ten-hour day. All
overtime is paid for at regular day rates. The rate is rather under that
paid on the mainland, where ironers earn $15.00 and $18.00 a week when
working long hours.
Shirts, collars and cuffs are ironed on machines driven by gas, steam or
electricity, the other pieces being ironed by hand, with electric or
gas-heated irons. The ironing machines and boards are all placed at the
windows on the mauka side of the room, so that the breeze blowing almost
continuously from the hills may be taken advantage of.
In one laundry all the latest appliances in electric and steam-driven
machines especially are in use; but the other two use gas and some
electricity for their machines and irons. As the workrooms of these two
laundries are open to the air on all four sides, however, the fumes do
not accumulate, though they are in evidence to a slight degree near the
machines when they are in operation.
Finally such pieces as require mending or darning go to a woman—usually
an elderly person—who is regularly employed for this purpose, and who
receives $4.50 a week in all the laundries.
The workers are of all ages, conditions and races.
The visits were made at the time of year when the laundries were least
busy, and the race proportion among the women workers was as follows:—
Portuguese 90
Hawaiians 25
Filipinos 10
Chinese 2
Porto Rican 1
Japanese 1
——
129
The one Japanese had been adopted when a baby by a white family, and had
been “raised white.” No Japanese are employed in any of the laundries,
because of the fear of cut prices if processes are learned; but, on the
other hand, there are innumerable Chinese and Japanese laundries
throughout the city, the Bureau of Licenses having a record of 232 which
are being operated without the license showing inspection by the Board
of Health, required from the other laundries. Most of these are said to
be conducted by Japanese women, who collect laundry from individual
customers, hiring other Japanese women to do the work. But although
there is a record of their existence, numerous trips through the
tenement blocks failed to disclose any of them in operation.
Laundry managers say they find efficient workers among all
nationalities, and that the grade of help is slowly improving. One
manager says there is a great deal of jealousy between the different
races on the score of advancement.
It was difficult to find any prevailing characteristics among the
workers. Several worked because their husbands earned insufficient
salaries to provide a “good home.” Three worked because they said it
improved their health! The majority of Portuguese, however, either said
they were helping to buy homes, or were members of large families, in
eight instances having no support from their father, either through
illness or death. The Filipinos and Porto Ricans spoke no English and it
was impossible to talk with them. One Portuguese lady thought I was
collecting for a church and immediately took out her pocket-book,
searching through many petticoats to find it.
Here, as in the canneries, there was general good spirit among the
employes, even the girls shaking out the sheets and table-cloths for the
mangles—the most tiring work of all—doing it with much chattering and
gossip. It must be because so much of the work is done in the fresh air
that one sees little of the strained, tired expression of the mainland
industrial worker. Several of the women stated that they had varicose
ulcers on their legs, but none of these had been working in the laundry
for a sufficiently long period to make this work the cause of the
trouble.
The laundries are all prosperous and growing, their managers say, most
of the work coming from the steamers and transports constantly touching
at Honolulu.
No previous training is required or wished, each laundry having its own
way of doing its work and preferring to teach its own employes. There
should be employment for from twenty-five to thirty girls in this work
within the next year; but a ten-hour day rigid law and better wages are
needed here.
THE CANNERIES
The Fourth Report of the Department of Commerce and Labor on Hawaii
(Bulletin No. 94, May, 1911) sums up the possibilities of industry in
the islands as a whole as follows—(1) page 674:
“The Territory possesses no mineral or fuel deposits, and this,
together with the remoteness from markets, prevents diversified
industries. A small amount of subsistence farming, followed
principally by natives and orientals, and the production of staple
export crops, like sugar, have hitherto been the principal
occupations of the people.”
To this should also be added the product of the pineapple canneries,
which, strangely enough, is omitted entirely from the report, although
increasing in value and importance by leaps and bounds. This omission
may perhaps be accounted for by the fact that the bulletin issued in May
was compiled before the canning season commenced, which is not usually
until June 1st, lasting this year until October 5th. In the past ten
years the value of the pineapple exports _increased from_ $3,948 _to_
$1,229,647, almost 400%,[4] and the growth of this year’s business over
last may be gauged from the fact that while one establishment employed a
maximum of 215 women and girls last year, this year they report 450
employed during their heaviest time.
Footnote 4:
Bulletin of the Thirteenth Census of the United States, 1910; page 11.
Then, too, while last year 60% of the entire “pack” was reported as
being taken care of in three weeks, this year there were only six or
seven half-day shut downs during the four months of the season.
The manufacturers’ problem in Honolulu is uncomplicated by the variety
of processes and products of the mainland cannery. The only product with
which they have to deal is the pineapple, as against spinach, berries of
all varieties, cherries, peas, wax beans, tomatoes, pears, peaches,
apples, beets and finally oysters in Maryland; asparagus, strawberries,
peas, gooseberries, cherries, currants, beans, blackberries, apricots,
greengages, plums, peaches, pears, tomatoes, grapes and quinces in
California; while Pittsburgh, Pa., cans berries, fruits, beans, corn,
peas and tomatoes, as well as pickles and molasses.
After the overripe fruit is eliminated there is little or no waste in
canning pineapple. As the boxes are taken from the freight cars into the
factory, the “pines,” as they are usually termed, are stripped of their
green ends by the trimmers, and these ends are planted for the rattoon
crop. The pineapple yields two crops, requiring, like sugar, eighteen
months to mature the first crop, the second, or rattoon, crop being
ready for harvest in twelve months. Sometimes the trimming is done
before the fruit is shipped from the plantations, in which case it is
ready when received at the cannery for the coring and peeling machine.
This machine is operated by men, and calls for considerable sureness of
eye to secure the largest number of perfect pineapples for slicing. If
the fruit is at all soft, however, it is split into two and sometimes
three parts in this process, and is then used for grated pineapple,
which is also made of the slices too imperfect for canning, the odds and
ends from the slicing machine, and the fruit which still adheres to the
peeling. These are accumulated in tubs, taken to the screening machine,
which reduces it to the consistency of the grated pineapple, used
principally at soda fountains. The grated pulp is received in a wooden
vat running the length of the screen, and is conducted automatically
from this vat into tubs. From these tubs the pulp is poured in bulk into
cooking vats, where it is mixed with the sweetening syrup. From the
cooking vats it is automatically fed into large cans, gallon or
half-gallon, these cans in turn being automatically sealed and put into
a cooling bath, after which they are sent to the labeling room.
After the pineapples are peeled and cored they go through a second
trimming process with a pruning knife, by means of which all the “eyes”
and small pieces of peeling are removed.
They are then placed in the slicing machine, from which the slices are
automatically deposited onto a traveling web band about ten inches wide,
moving at a medium rate of speed along the centre of the packing tables,
which are about thirty feet long. On each side of the moving web are
wooden shelves, the one immediately in front of the packer being used as
a sorting tray. On the shelf back of the web are arranged the trays of
empty cans, each tray stamped with the grade of fruit it is to hold.
Above this shelf is a second one, on which are empty trays to receive
the cans of fruit as they are packed. As soon as a tray is filled with a
dozen cans, it is taken away by a man to be filled with syrup and
cooked.
As the sliced pineapple is deposited onto the traveling web, the girl
next to the slicing machine, usually an experienced and efficient
worker, selects the most perfect slices—those having no flaws or
imperfect edges, and whitest in color. The next worker selects the next
grade, and so on down the table, the residue, unsuitable for canning,
going into the pulp tub. When she has a sufficient number of slices of
the proper grade, she makes a mound of them, turns an empty can down
over the mound, slips it off the sorting tray and places it right side
up on the tray for filled cans.
After the cans have been filled with the sliced pineapple and syrup,
they are taken to another machine which automatically places the cover
on the can and seals it.
The sealed cans are then taken on a tray to the cooking vat, where they
are lowered in boiling water onto a slowly moving platform, which
carries them, submerged, through the water for just a sufficient length
of time, gauged automatically, to cook the fruit. The tray of cans is
then raised, again automatically, onto a continuation of the moving
platform, which immerses them in a cold bath, in which they are kept for
a sufficient length of time to cool them. The cans are then sent to the
labeling room, where they receive their various brands, according to
grade and to the customers for whom they are intended.
All machinery is geared at a low rate of speed; the only process which
holds any menace is the peeling and coring machine, which must have the
careful attention of the operator to keep his fingers from the knives.
The cores, which formerly were thrown out with the waste, are now also
sliced into inch lengths, cooked, canned and sold to confectioners, who
coat them with chocolate and sell them as pineapple candies. As these
cores have about as much taste as juicy wood, it is at least a question
how much of pineapple the ultimate consumer is favored with.
The women workers in the canneries are divided into four classes:
trimmers, packers, labelers and miscellaneous, the latter doing duty at
the slicing machine, the pulp troughs and in packing the cores.
The new workers are usually started at trimming and at packing cores,
the youngest ones performing the latter work or tending the slicing
machines. All of this work is done in a sitting position in one of the
canneries; but the other two establishments have no seats for any of
their employes.
At the packing table, however, the workers stand shoulder to shoulder,
sometimes in the height of the season as closely packed as they can
work: ordinarily, however, there is ample room for each individual. At
one cannery there are seats back of the packers, but they are so
arranged that it is impossible to do more than lean back against them
for a moment or two, and even this throws an additional strain on the
workers’ feet, which it is necessary to brace against the floor or the
framework of the fruit table.
Work commences at seven o’clock in the morning, and on days when the
cannery runs full time the official closing time is half-past five; but
in only one cannery did the employes state that there was an earlier
closing time than six o’clock. Half an hour is allowed for lunch, this
being divided between two shifts from noon until one o’clock. The normal
working day is therefore eleven or eleven and one-half hours long, as in
the factory world it is the custom to close half an hour earlier when
the lunch hour is shortened to half an hour.[5]
Footnote 5:
Butler, Elizabeth Beardsley; Women and the Trades, page 311.
No skill is required by any of the processes; but the packers must
exercise good judgment in selecting slices of the proper grade, else
cans marked to contain the best fruit may receive inferior contents and
vice versa. The forewomen, of whom there is one at each table in two of
the canneries, are responsible for the “pack,” as it is called. If the
manager, in inspecting the cans, which he does haphazard, finds careless
packing coming frequently from any table, the forewoman is deposed; but
there are no fines and no penalties, for the reason that it is
impossible to locate the packer responsible for the work. Sometimes two
or three are engaged in packing the same grade of slices at the same
table.
One cannery reports employing no forewoman because of the unwillingness
on the part of any of the women workers to assume this responsibility.
The wages paid as reported by employers vary from five and six cents an
hour, paid workers under sixteen years of age, to fifteen cents an hour
paid to forewomen. As a result, girls who commence working at twelve
years of age and are experienced and efficient workers, receive less
wages than an older girl in her first season. The highest rate per hour
paid to any but forewomen is ten cents, and the lowest paid to workers
over sixteen years of age is seven and one-half cents an hour. One
cannery reports paying for eleven hours if the employes work ten hours.
Overtime is paid for at the regular rate of pay per hour; and in the
case of night work until eight or half-past, the workers interviewed say
they either go without supper until they return home or else their
supper costs them the greater part of what they earn in the three extra
hours. One employer says he pays time and a half for overtime, “when he
has to,” and one gives the employes coffee and sandwiches for supper
when they work later than 7 o’clock. As coffee and bread is the almost
invariable breakfast and lunch—if, indeed, any lunch at all is eaten—the
effect on the workers’ health of this overtime, without food, or with
the kind of food available, cannot but be injurious.
The cannery owners state that during the heavy season it is necessary to
work overtime to take care of the fruit, which deteriorates rapidly and
which cannot be packed in cold storage; that the Federal Experiment
Station had found no way to prevent waste, once the pineapple is ripe,
if it is not canned immediately.
Sunday work, of which only five days are reported by the three
canneries, is, however, devoted to labeling, this being done after the
fruit is cooked, canned and ready for shipment, so there could be no
question of deterioration here. A similar state of affairs, in regard to
overtime work, was found in California canneries.
At seven and a half cents an hour—a trifle over the average paid all
workers (omitting forewomen)—it is necessary for a girl working sixty
hours a week (and being paid for sixty-six according to the one-hour
bonus plan) to earn $4.95. Contrasted with the average wage earned by
employes in the city and country canneries of California, this shows a
much lower rate in Honolulu, the California average being $7.92 a week
for 63.8 hours’ work in the country canneries and $7.21 a week for 57.8
hours’ work in the city establishments. (This average also omitted
forewomen.)[6]
Footnote 6:
Bulletin of the Bureau of Labor, No. 96, September, 1911; page 397.
The owner of one of the canneries stated that last year the average wage
was $3.50 to $4.00, and that some of the employes who had been with them
longest earned as high as $10.50 during the heavy season. This year the
rate of pay was raised in all the canneries, due, I was told by several
of the girls, to “kicks by the Jap women.”
The only menace to the health of the workers in the pineapple canneries
which might arise from the occupation itself, is the effect of the
pineapple juice on the skin. Chemical analysis shows that the acid is so
strong, it digests the skin as secretions of the alimentary canal digest
food.
By order of the Health Department, rubber gloves are supplied by the
companies to the workers handling the fruit; but most of them work
barefooted, standing in the drippings from the tables, and their feet
were badly eaten by the juice.
On taking this up with the authorities, I was told that the reason the
rubber gloves were ordered was not because of the probable injury to the
workers, but in order to protect the product from possible
contamination.
It would be possible to slat the floors where the workers stand, and
flush them well with water several times a day.
None of the Honolulu canneries give free housing accommodations.
The work of screening, operating the syrup machines, cooking, sealing
the cans, as well as peeling and coring, is done by men in all the
canneries.
Table Showing Length of Season, Time Shut Down During Season; Overtime
Run, in Honolulu Canneries in 1912:
───────────────────────┬───────────────────────────────────────────────
Lgth of Season. │ Time Shut Down. Overtime Run.
───────────────────────┼───────────────────────────────────────────────
1-4 months │7 half days. 28 hours Sunday, 24
│ hours night.
2-3½ months │1 whole, 4 hfdays 30 hours Sunday, 60
│ hours night.
3-3½ months │5 whole, 1 hf day 10 hours Sunday, 53
│ hours night.
═══════════════════════╧═══════════════════════════════════════════════
Table Showing Wages paid per hour, Season of 1912, in Honolulu
Canneries (As of October 1st.)
═╤═════════╤═════════╤═════════╤═════════╤══════════════╤══════════════
│Forewomen│Trimmers │ Packers │Labelers │ Over 16. │ Under 16.
─┼─────────┼─────────┼─────────┼─────────┼──────┬───────┼──────╥───────
│ 〃 │ 〃 │ 〃 │ 〃 │ No. │Wages. │ No. ║ Wages
─┼─────────┼─────────┼─────────┼─────────┼──────┼───────┼──────╫───────
1│ $0.09│ $0.08│ $0.08 │ $0.08 │ 250│ │ 100║
│ .15│ │ │ │ │ │ ║
─┼─────────┼─────────┼─────────┼─────────┼──────┼───────┼──────╫───────
2│ .15│ .10│ .07½│ .07½│ 85│ │ 40║
│ │ │ .10 │ .08½│ │ │ ║
─┼─────────┼─────────┼─────────┼─────────┼──────┼───────┼──────╫───────
3│ │ │ │ │ 47│ $0.07½│ 12║ 0.06
─┴─────────┴─────────┴─────────┴─────────┴──────┴───────┴──────╨───────
Total largest number of women employed 651
Total smallest number women employed 142
Total Hawaiians and Part-Hawaiians employed 242 in 2 canneries
Total Japanese employed 104 in 2 canneries
Total Chinese employed 40 in 2 canneries
Total Portuguese employed 28 in 2 canneries
COST OF LIVING
Inquiry into the cost at which it is possible for a woman or girl to
live independently in Honolulu was based on two propositions:
_First._—That she live in the home family of a friend or relative,
and pay her quota of expense.
_Second._—That she either board or room in the community.
I have given first consideration to the proposition that she live in a
family because experience has proven that to be the most desirable place
for the average working girl.
The Children’s Aid Society of Boston has set its face against the
philanthropic home or hotel for working girls because it fails to give
them a background for their future life as wives and mothers. The Clara
de Hirsch Home in New York City,—a most successful institution,—cares
for immigrant girls without family ties until they may safely become
members of the community. As soon as a girl is considered to be earning
a sufficient wage and acquainted with the customs of her new
environment, she is placed in a private family, these families being
carefully selected by the authorities of the Home.
Girls who have been committed to Orphan Asylums in their youth are also
“bridged over” by residence in this Home, to membership in the normal
community.
Training in various trades is given. There is a gymnasium, and a varied
social program.
The girls pay from $3.00 to $6.00 a week, according to earning capacity.
In Honolulu I should say such a home would be valuable for girls who, as
in New York, have been brought up in Orphan Asylums; for those who are
taken away from improper home surroundings by the Courts; and for any
other girls without family ties who may not be sufficiently well
grounded in character to live safely in the community. I do not
consider, however, that the normal wage-earning girl should be provided
for in this way.
I am told that native girls who earn fair wages and live in families
other than their own, pay $2.50 a week, usually in fish, or poi, or
canned goods, rather than in money. I was unable to find any specific
girl who is now doing this; but was told of the practice by women who
had known of instances at other times, and whose knowledge of conditions
is unquestionably accurate. This does not represent the actual value of
accommodations, however, as will be shown.
The working girls I talked with who were not living in their own
families were, with the exception of those living in the Kaiulani Home,
either with relatives or adopted parents, and were paying no board. Two
women occupied tenement rooms, but both were married, and had come to
Honolulu from the country for the canning season.
Girls who do all their own sewing say their clothing costs them at least
$1.25 a week to maintain a sufficiently good appearance to take any part
in the social activities of their associates. This is distributed as
follows in a yearly allowance:
3 Hats:—
2 for Business, at $2.00 each $4.00
1 for Good wear 4.00
—— $ 8.00
4 Dresses for Business, at $2.00 8.00
2 Dresses for Good wear, at $5.00 10.00
4 Pair Shoes, at $3.00 12.00
Underwear 8.00
3 Pairs Silk Gloves for good wear 3.00
1 Dark Skirt for bad weather 2.00
2 Shirt Waists, at 75c 1.50
1 Coat 5.00
1 Umbrella 1.00
2 Pairs Rubbers 1.50
Incidentals, handkerchiefs, collars, sewing materials, etc. 5.00
———
$65.00
The fact that the same wardrobe does duty in Hawaii the year round is a
very great saving. The girl who has not been taught to sew (and this
girl is in the majority) must allow at least 25c a week additional for
clothing.
Board, lodging and clothing can therefore be had at $3.75 or $4.00 a
week; carfare is 60c; the cheapest lunch, 5c for coffee and rolls, is
another 30c, which brings the total cost to $4.65 or $4.90, without any
allowance for incidental carfares or amusements.
On the other hand living expenses in the community, when reduced to
their lowest rate, bring the total expense to $2.00 a week each,
provided two girls share a room.
I have followed up numerous advertisements in the daily papers,
investigated “Furnished room” signs, etc., and found in the first place
that no furnished room house will permit cooking to be done in the
rooms, and secondly that the lowest rate for a furnished room for two
girls was $2.00 a week. If two girls together rented a tenement room at
$2.00 a month they would need to buy a bed, dishes and cooking utensils,
costing at least $15.00. The cost per week of maintaining such a room
would then be for each:
Rent $ .25
Fuel and light .25
Food (fruit, poi, coffee, rice, fish, etc.) 1.50
—————
$2.00
I have made a sufficient allowance for food to provide a nourishing
diet.
After a girl has worked ten or eleven hours, however, I fear the
temptation would be either to eat in a cheap restaurant or to neglect
cooking a substantial evening meal, especially in the case of the
Hawaiian girls, who are prone to omit meals when fatigued unless food is
placed before them. In the eating place provided by the Libby, McNeill
and Libby Cannery, which serves wholesome, nourishing meals at ten cents
each, the girls eat everything placed before them. The sea air blowing
through the workroom constantly undoubtedly has its share in creating
this appetite.
If two girls were to occupy a furnished room and have their meals in
restaurant the minimum weekly rate for each would be:
Rent of Room $1.00
Food 2.50
—————
$3.50
The cheapest rate at which I could find boarding accommodations for two
girls in a room was $10.00, for a close, hot room in a house which did
not seem at all desirable from any point of view.
Altogether the best plan which presents itself for providing
accommodations is a rooming house making provision for two girls in a
room, and having a cafeteria dining room. I should not advise making
this a philanthropic venture. It should be not only absolutely
self-sustaining, but should be conducted with a view to its making a
return of at least 3% on money invested. This is the return made by the
Mills Hotels in New York. Emphasis should be laid first on developing
enterprises by which self-supporting girls may earn an adequate living,
and, secondly, on obtaining a living wage for those engaged in
occupations already established, rather than on providing them with a
living place at philanthropic rates.
Before a girl is encouraged to leave her family and live in any other
home it would be well to give a thorough consideration to her home
problem and determine whether surroundings which at first may seem
undesirable cannot in some way be changed so that family ties need not
be broken. Family responsibility needs to be strengthened in every way
possible among the natives, and if Hawaiian women who have had
educational advantages would undertake the home improvement work which
has had such beneficial results in the Southern States, much might be
accomplished in raising standards of sanitation as well as morals. Whole
families still occupy one room for sleeping purposes, and matters of
this kind can only be remedied by constant personal effort. Congresses
of physicians and other bodies assembled to discuss questions of sex
morality all agree that little can be accomplished so long as habits of
decent privacy are not inculcated.
HOURS
The Territory of Hawaii has as yet no labor laws, and therefore the
hours during which men, women and children work are governed entirely by
the will of employers, the workers’ own wishes or economic necessities,
and in the case of children by the act providing that they shall attend
school during ten months in the year until they are fifteen, when they
may be released to go to work.
Employment in the canneries is by the hour, each employe being given a
time card which is punched on coming to work in the morning, on resuming
work at noon, and on leaving at night.
While the cannery season is short, it is also exacting. In addition to a
regular eleven-hour day for four months in the year, a maximum of sixty
hours overtime night work and thirty hours of Sunday work was reported
by one cannery. Two others report less amounts. One employer said he
worked his employes all they would stand for. Weekly pay envelopes show
from seventy to eighty hours of work per week, in some cases running as
high as eighty-four hours. In California, where the season extended over
fourteen weeks, averaging sixty-three hours each, two cannery officials,
each in a different cannery, are reported by the investigator of the
Department of Commerce and Labor as volunteering the opinion that
“cannery work was so much of a strain that workers were unfit to do
other work when the cannery season was over.”[7]
Footnote 7:
Bulletin of the Bureau of Labor No. 96. p. 403.
Perhaps the women employes in the small Chinese and Japanese shops have
the longest hours continuously, as these shops open at seven o’clock in
the morning and do not close until nine o’clock or later in the evening.
The workers in the laundries, who have a regular ten-hour day, perform
overtime work until eight or nine o’clock at least twice a week, and
during the winter season, when the tourists are most numerous, one
laundry manager reported eighty-seven hours overtime in one month.
Saturday is a half holiday unless there is a special rush of work.
Household servants, here as elsewhere, are among the least considered
sufferers from the long day, and although Honolulu mistresses of
households call to one’s attention the fact that no servants are on duty
in the evening, that may be regarded rather as a mitigation of one of
the greatest hardships borne by domestic servants, rather than as having
a bearing on the general question of a normal working day.
Honolulu is an early riser, and servants come on duty at half-past six.
Dinner is not over at the earliest until seven o’clock, which means that
the work of the maid who waits on the table continues for at least
twelve and one-half hours, and longer if she has any duties after
dinner.
There are few women cooks, the domestic servants being almost
exclusively housemaids, waitresses and nursemaids. Where several maids
are employed, each of them has an hour or two of leisure through the
day; but in the case of the cook-and-one-maid menage, which is by far
the most common, Sunday afternoon, and occasionally,—but by no means
universally,—an afternoon during the week is given. The long day is a
potent factor in the servant problem; and yet the Japanese women, like
their sisters in other communities, prefer to go to work at the machines
in the little shops. I have talked with as many of them as could
understand English, and none would consider going back to housework. On
having their attention called to the fact that they were working just as
long in the shops they smiled and nodded, saying: “Bimeby not work so
long,” which may forecast a similar situation to that brought about by
certain of the Chinese huis, who have, notably among the tailors,
succeeded in securing an eleven-hour day. It is an undoubted fact that
rather than become a household servant at a minimum wage of $4.00 a week
and her food,—in many cases all her living expense,—the women work
twelve and fourteen hours in the shop for from $2.00 to $5.00.
Clerks and stenographers have an eight-hour day. Shop girls are on duty
from seven-forty-five until five o’clock, with an hour at noon and a
Saturday half holiday three months in the year. One shop closes on
Saturday at one o’clock four months in the year.
The shop girls have two weeks’ vacation with pay, and all the stores
provide seats.
Stenographers also have two weeks’ vacation with pay, in a great many
cases being allowed a three months’ vacation every three years.
Teachers are on duty from eight-forty-five in the morning until
two-fifteen in the afternoon—almost an hour and a half less than the
regulation time for this work. They have a somewhat longer vacation,
too, than elsewhere.
In her consideration of hours of work, in “Women and the Trades,”[8]
Miss Butler questions the length of the working day which may be
considered “long.” “At present (even) ten hours as the limit of the
working day is far from universal,” she says. “Should ten hours,
however, be set as a permissive standard? Or should we seek rather to
work out, on the basis of health, a lower maximum beyond which no
employe may go, and below this maximum set others corresponding to the
degree of strain in different industries?... Hours are ‘long,’ whether
the day is eight hours or ten, if the work is continued so long that it
causes ill health or interferes with the employes’ capacity for
recreation.”
Footnote 8:
Pp. 354-5-6.
This latter statement is especially interesting in the light of a
conversation with the manager of one of the Honolulu canneries. He was
asked his opinion of the degree of danger to the cannery women employes
from being obliged to go through Iwilei, especially on their way from
work in the evening. He said: “After the girls have worked ten or twelve
hours a day there is not much danger that they will skylark. They are
only too glad to get home and to bed.”
But even though they are too tired to “skylark” they do not go to bed.
Here as elsewhere the large majority of women workers have household
tasks—cooking, washing and ironing—to perform both before and after
working hours; and many have children to care for. This is especially
true of the Hawaiian, Chinese and Japanese, and I have seen the women
standing on first one foot and then the other to relieve the strain as
early as nine o’clock in the morning, after a stretch of long hours.
Managers of the canneries say that the workers are at liberty to stop
work at any hour of the day they wish, as the pay is by the hour. In
common practice, however, it is made as difficult as possible to secure
an accounting for time excepting at regular periods; and when work is
pressing permission to leave before closing time is refused.
Managers themselves say that the habit of going home before closing time
or at noon is more common among the younger girls who are working during
their school vacation,—which occurs almost identically with the canning
season,—than among the regular workers.
The Hawaiian enjoys her work, as she enjoys most of the things she does,
and she is as yet too new to industry to show superficially any ill
effects of labor. It was not possible, in the three and one-half months
of the investigation, to make any study of the effects of work on her
health.
The experience of the world, however, is more than likely to be the
experience of Hawaii.
Hours of work and the resulting fatigue strains have been made the
subject of a close, scientific investigation, covering a period of five
years, by Miss Josephine Goldmark, publication secretary of the National
Consumers’ League, which has now been published in book form under the
title of “Fatigue and Efficiency,” and gives the results of the
experience of both Europe and America concerning the effects of long
hours, night work and occupational strains on women workers. Miss
Goldmark also gives the substance of four briefs prepared by her under
the direction of Mr. Louis D. Brandeis in his successful defense of
various State laws limiting women’s hours of labor.
Her investigation shows that long hours of work by women, especially if
performed in a standing position, mean to the community heightened
infant mortality, a falling birth rate, and race degeneration, while to
the workers themselves they mean every sort of disorder. In speaking of
general injuries to health, Miss Goldmark says: “The fatigue which
follows excessive working hours becomes chronic, and results in general
deterioration of health. While it may not result in immediate disease,
it undermines the whole system by weakness and anaemia.”
On the other hand the good effect of short hours is shown by the growth
of temperance, and “wherever sufficient time has elapsed since the
establishment of the shorter working day, the succeeding generation has
shown extraordinary improvement in physique and morals.”[9]
Footnote 9:
“Fatigue and Efficiency,” Part II, p. 290.
Several pages of testimony from all over the world are submitted in
support of the statement that “even the lightest work becomes totally
exhausting when carried on for an excessive length of time.” She quotes
from Dr. Ludwig Hirt’s “The Disease of Working People”: “No attitude of
the body is harmful in itself; only in prolonging it until it produces
harmful results; all the well-known disturbances, such as varicose
veins, etc., etc., arise not through sitting or standing, but through
excessively prolonged sitting or standing.”[10]
Footnote 10:
“Fatigue and Efficiency,” Part II, p. 321.
For the protection of their women workers more than thirty American
States have enacted laws limiting the hours of employment for women; but
only three States,—Massachusetts, Indiana and Nebraska,—have passed a
law in such form as to make it enforcible. Miss Goldmark defines “the
rigid law, which prohibits overtime and night work,” as “one which
provides fixed boundaries for working hours. It protects women from
working after a specified hour at night, and more than a given number of
hours by the day or week. The best exemplar of this kind of law in the
United States is the Massachusetts statute which prohibits the
employment of women in textile mills more than ten hours in one day, or
more than fifty-four hours in one week, or before six o’clock in the
morning or after six o’clock in the evening.... The law is final. Its
provisions are clear cut. Employers, employes and inspectors know
without disagreement or argument what constitutes a violation. Work
continued after the specified closing hour is conclusive evidence of
violation.”
As showing the beneficial effect of shorter hours on output, Miss
Goldmark quotes at length from the testimony of various Massachusetts
employers of labor. The Treasurer of the Atlantic Mills, in Lawrence,
stated: “We saw an improvement in the operatives directly after adopting
ten hours.... We have had more continuous and uninterrupted work
throughout the year than before.” The Report of the Massachusetts
District Police states: “One manufacturer stated to me a short time ago
that he had run his mill sixty-six hours per week, supposing that by so
doing he increased the production nearly one-eleventh, but was
persuaded ... to reduce his running time to sixty hours per week, and at
the end of six months found that the production of his mill had
increased nearly ten per cent, while the quality of work done was more
perfect.”
The entire question of the long day is as yet in its incipiency in
Hawaii, and the closing paragraph of Miss Goldmark’s preface is
peculiarly pertinent. She says:
“In the main opposition to laws protecting working women and children
has come from the unenlightened employer, who has been blind to his own
larger interests and who has always seen in every attempt to protect the
workers an interference with business and dividends. To this day it is
the short-sighted and narrow-minded spirit of money-making that is the
most persistent enemy of measures designed to save the workers from
exhaustion and to conserve their working capacities. Regular, continuous
labor and exertion is as necessary for the worker’s health as it is for
subsistence, and if legislation regulating the workday had sought to
invade legitimate work, it would long ago have defeated its own end....
“First the new industry, then exploitation, then the demand for some
measure of protection—such is the universal story. Nor is this a chance
sequence. It is the relentless record of history, the more impressive
for its unconscious testimony to a waste of human effort and experience,
in retrospect scarcely credible among a thinking people, yet in our very
midst persisting steadily to this day.”
Hawaiian employers, most of whom are kamaainas, sincerely interested in
the welfare of the Hawaiian girls and women, have not given adequate
thought to the broader social problems of their employes. Kind
treatment, good air and light do much to mitigate matters, but no woman
or girl can work standing continuously for ten or more hours a day and
retain her health. Nor will she in this way become a homemaker, and an
intelligent mother and member of the community.
AN ACT
RESTRICTING THE HOURS OF LABOR OF WOMEN AND CHILDREN UNDER THE AGE OF
SIXTEEN YEARS.
_Be It Enacted by the Legislature of the Territory of Hawaii_:
SECTION 1. The term “establishment” where used in this Act shall mean
any place within this Territory other than where domestic or
agricultural labor is employed; where men, women or children are engaged
and paid a salary or wages by any person, firm or corporation, and where
such men, women or children are employes in the general acceptance of
that term.
SECTION 2. No minor under the age of sixteen years, and no female shall
be employed in any establishment for a longer period than sixty (60)
hours in any one week nor for a longer period than ten (10) hours in any
one day.
SECTION 3. No minor under sixteen years and no female shall be employed
or suffered to work in any establishment before the hour of six in the
morning, or after the hour of six in the evening.
SECTION 4. Retail mercantile establishments shall be exempt from the
provisions of Sections 2 and 3 hereof during a period of ten days
beginning with the fifteenth day of December and ending with the
twenty-fourth day of the same month.
SECTION 5. Any person, firm or corporation violating any provision of
this Act shall, upon conviction, be fined in a sum not less than One
Hundred Dollars ($100.00) or more than Five Hundred Dollars ($500.00)
for each day any person is employed, permitted or suffered to work in
violation of this Act.
SECTION 6. This Act shall be in force and effect from and after the date
of its approval.
WAGES
As stated in the report of the Massachusetts Commission on Minimum Wage
Boards (page 8): “To obtain an accurate view of the condition of labor,
so far as women and minors are concerned, it is especially of service to
obtain, if possible, not only the wage schedules, but the actual weekly
and annual variation of these earnings, with ages and experience,
irregularity of employment, the economic status of the workers in so far
as they are aided by other members of a family group, or by charity, or
are themselves called on to support others.”
For many reasons it was not possible to exactly work out all these
details in Honolulu. Information was, as a rule, to be had from the
workers only during the lunch hour and after work was finished, and as
many of them did not know their street and number, a knowledge of
conditions was obtained by visiting in the homes in various parts of the
city, both during the day and at night, rather than by following up
individual workers. Only five girls could remember what amounts their
pay envelopes contained for three consecutive weeks. Then, too, the
great majority of women of all nationalities spoke no English.
Employers were interested and helpful, and I am indebted to them for
much definite information, which was in practically all instances
corroborated by the statements of the workers themselves; and it is
mainly on employers’ information that I have based my statements of
wages paid. The workers appear on the pay-roll by number, names not
being known as a rule, and here again it was impossible to follow up
individuals.
In general, unskilled wage-earners are almost without exception aided by
other members of a family group or by charity, the latter group
including those called on to assist others, and those who low wages
force to accept shelter or food, or both, either from friends or
relatives, or from homes philanthropically provided.
As shown in the Cost of Living Schedule, the minimum subsistence cost in
Honolulu is $5.00 a week; whereas the wages earned by beginners vary
from $2.50 to $3.50 in occupations offering employment to only a few
workers, to a minimum of $4.80 in the canneries; while the majority of
laundry workers, with several years’ experience, earn only $20.00 a
month.
The fixing of minimum wages for women and minors otherwise than by the
law of supply and demand, or the sense of social responsibility of
employers, has been in force in Australia since 1896, through the
operation of a Minimum Wage Board, while England and Massachusetts
created such Boards in 1910 and 1912, respectively.
The thought of such a Board in Hawaii at the present time may be quite
as amusing as the action of the International Association for Labor
Legislation (called by the Swiss Federal Council and participated in by
official representatives of fourteen European powers) prohibiting night
work for women in Uganda, Ceylon, Fiji Islands, Leeward Islands and
Trinidad; yet, as Miss Goldmark says, in commenting on this action:
“Experience has taught the wisdom of legislating before industry is
present.”
Industry is, however, present in Hawaii, and its growth has been so
rapid that, as stated before, employers have not considered seriously
the questions involved in women’s work.
An employer who was genuinely anxious to do his best for his employes
asked me seriously: “What would the girls do with any more money if they
had it?” He was quite willing to consider a living wage, and also spoke
of profit-sharing with employes.
The majority of employers, when spoken to concerning the insufficiency
of wages paid, point out that their employes have homes in which there
are other bread-winners; and that with few exceptions they are not
entirely dependent on their own efforts.
One special group of seven women was analyzed. Each received a flat wage
of $3.00 a week in an occupation requiring no skill, and in which no
advance in wages could be received until two years’ service had been
rendered, when $4.00 was paid. Even here one girl—a Japanese—who had
been employed over two years, had received no advance.
Of this group three women were married, one was widowed and three were
young girls. One of the married women, whose husband was in jail and who
had a three-year-old child—the victim of infantile paralysis—was
receiving her rent from a church society. The woman who was widowed also
had her rent paid by a church society. Two of the girls received help
from their respective fathers in addition to their living expenses, and
one woman supported herself and invalid husband on her earnings in this
position and in the canneries where she worked during the season with
her grandchild, the two earning about $8.00 a week. She was a wiry,
industrious Hawaiian woman of about sixty, and it took much persuasion
to get her story from her. The Hawaiians are not beggars and few of the
old stock have been known to seek alms.
The proprietor, on having these facts called to his attention, said that
he could hire Chinese boys at $3.00 a week and have the work done more
efficiently. Yet even Chinese boys dependent on their own efforts cannot
subsist decently on $3.00 a week.
In her address before the National Conference of Charities and
Corrections in Cleveland, held in June, 1912, Mrs. Florence Kelly, the
dean and veritably the mother of industrial investigation, said:
“We cannot longer escape the knowledge that there is no more
efficient cause of wholesale destitution in the United States than
industry. It can be said with truth that poverty is the regular and
inevitable byproduct of our present industry, as wealth is its
normal product. We carry on our industry to produce wealth, and
incidentally we produce wholesale poverty.
“Insufficient wages underlie a vast proportion of the need for
correctional and reformatory work. They entail upon the community
child labor, tuberculosis, underfeeding, lack of refreshing sleep
and consequent nervous breakdown.
“They underlie industrial employment of mothers, whose neglected
children fail in health and morals. The children in turn crowd the
juvenile courts and custodial institutions....
“It behooves us all to put in practice as rapidly as we may some
standard of payment for the working people having due relation to
the expenditure of life itself, in the service of all, that is made
by those who work for wages.”
A typical example of the spirit being developed among employers by a
better knowledge of conditions is cited by Mrs. Kelley:
“A leading store in Boston—Filene’s—has for several months
maintained a minimum wage of $8.00 a week. For many years this store
had employed no one who had not finished the work of the eighth
grade of the public schools. It has thus set for the whole country
an example of retail trade as a field in which industry can be
carried on under all the difficulties entailed by unlimited
competition, with profit and success, and without producing poverty
as its byproduct.”
In Honolulu working people can live comfortably on low wages,—in a
greater degree of comfort than in any other community of which I have
knowledge,—but in practically every family there is more than one
wage-earner—the wife and children contributing their quota, however
small.
Only the tenements, the best of which afford no decent privacy to
families, are open to the man with a family who earns $1.00 or even
$1.50 a day, if he is the sole wage-earner.
Your Oriental population is demonstrating its wish for better standards
of living by the avidity with which it is building itself homes and
sending its children to school.
Its morals will no doubt improve when, as a group of Chinese young
people said to a Mission class leader, they “have a better example set
them by representative white citizens.”
I believe that a Commission appointed by the Governor to look into wage
conditions in Hawaii, and their relation to the cost of living, would
clarify the whole Hawaiian labor situation, both at home and abroad.
Such a commission for the study of the wages of women and minors, was
created in Massachusetts in 1911, as follows:
“_Resolved_, That the Governor, with the advice and consent of the
Council, shall appoint a Commission of five persons, citizens of the
Commonwealth, of whom at least one shall be a woman, one shall be a
representative of labor, and one shall be a representative of
employers, to study the matter of wages.”
Its report recommended an Act not only establishing a Minimum Wage
Board, but also providing for the determination of minimum wages for
women and minors.
Sections 3 and 4 of this Act provide:
“SECTION 3. It shall be the duty of the commission to inquire into
the wages paid to the female employes in any occupation in the
Commonwealth if the commission has reason to believe that the wages
paid to a substantial number of such employes are inadequate to
supply the necessary cost of living and to maintain the worker in
health.
“SECTION 4. If after such investigation the commission is of the
opinion that in the occupation in question the wages paid to a
substantial number of female employes are inadequate to supply the
necessary cost of living and to maintain the worker in health, the
commission shall establish a wage board, consisting of not less than
six representatives of employers in the occupation in question and
of an equal number of representatives of the female employes in said
occupation and of one or more disinterested persons appointed by the
commission to represent the public, but the representatives of the
public shall not exceed one-half of the number of representatives of
either of the other parties. The commission shall designate the
chairman from among the representatives of the public, and shall
make rules and regulations governing the selection of members and
the modes of procedure of the boards, and shall exercise exclusive
jurisdiction over all questions arising with reference to the
validity of the procedure and of the determination of the boards.
The members of wage boards shall be compensated at the same rate as
jurors; they shall be allowed the performance of their duties, these
payments to be made from the appropriation for the expenses of the
commission.”
Mrs. Kelly says, concerning it,—and I can think of no more fitting close
to a report on industrial conditions:—
“We have never before brought to bear the experience of the people
most closely concerned. These are the employers, the workers, the
consumers, not the bondholders and stockholders. The employers know,
better than any other persons can possibly know, the meaning of the
pay-roll in relation to their particular branch of industry. The
workers know, as no one else can, what it costs to bring up a family
in a particular place in a given year, and what; if anything, can be
put away for the future out of a weekly wage. When, therefore, these
two participants, and representatives of the consuming public, pool
their knowledge and correlate the wages with the cost of living in
their community, in the full light of publicity, all the available,
intimate knowledge and practical experience is brought to bear upon
the wage scale thus established.
“This is a new extension of democracy into a field of industrial
bargaining. It gives the moral and legal support of the State to its
weakest economic elements, to the women and children. By thus
turning on the light, it makes real, for the first time, that which
has by the economists and the courts been assumed to exist, but has
not yet existed: equality of the two contracting parties. It gives
effect to the will of those who have in the past been mere pawns in
the hands of masters who have played the game on terms laid down by
themselves alone. It gives votes to women in a field in which women
most sorely need them, in the determination of their wages. It
tends, for the first time, to substitute justice through
self-government in industry, for charity.”
Respectfully submitted,
FRANCES BLASCOER.
SUMMARY OF EMPLOYMENT FOR WOMEN AND GIRLS.
═════════════╤════════╤══════╤═════╤════════════════════════╤═══════════════
OCCUPATION │ Number │Season│Hours│ WAGES │QUALIFICATIONS:
│Employed│ │ Per │ │
│ │ │ Day │ │
─────────────┼────────┼──────┼─────┼────┬─────┬──────┬──────┼───────────────
〃 │ 〃 │ 〃 │ 〃 │Hour│ Day │ Week │Month │ 〃
─────────────┼────────┼──────┼─────┼────┼─────┼──────┼──────┼───────────────
Teachers │ 163│ All│ 5½│ │ │ │ │
Public │ 40│ year│ │ │ │ │$50.00│Teachers
School │ │ 10│ │ │ │ │ to│Certificate.
Private │ │ mos.│ │ │ │ │$83.33│
School │ │ │ │ │ │ │ 37.50│
│ │ │ │ │ │ │ to│
│ │ │ │ │ │ │125.00│
│ │ │ │ │ │ │ │
Nurses │ 75│ All│ │ │ │$25.00│ │Hospital
│ │ year│ │ │ │ to│ │Diploma.
│ │ │ │ │ │$30.00│ │
│ │ │ │ │ │ │ │
Stenographers│ 100│ All│ 7-8│ │ │ │ 35.00│English,
│ │ year│ │ │ │ │ to│Stenography and
│ │ │ │ │ │ │150.00│Typewriting.
│ │ │ │ │ │ │ │
Saleswomen │ 175│ All│ 8-14│ │ │ $2.50│ │English, good
and │ │yr[13]│ │ │ │ to│ │appearance,
Clerks[11] │ │ │ │ │ │$45.00│ │good manners.
│ │ │ │ │ │ │ │
Seamstresses │ 100│ All│ 8½-9│ │$1.00│ │ │
and Needle │ │ year│ │ │ to│ │ │
Women[12] │ │ │ │ │ 2.50│ │ │
│ │ │ │ │ .30│ │ │
│ │ │ │ │ to│ │ │
│ │ │ │ │ 1.00│ │ │
│ │ │ │ │ │ │ │
Laundry │ 150│ All│10-13│ │$3.50│ │ │
Employees │ │yr[13]│ │ │ to│ │ │
│ │ │ │ │$6.00│ │ │
│ │ │ │ │ │ │ │
Cannery │ 651[14]│4 mos.│ 10½│ .05│ │ │ │
Employees │ 142│ All│to 14│ to│ │ │ │
│ │ year│ │ .15│ │ │ │
│ │ │ │ │ │ │ │
Coffee │ 70│8 mos.│ 9│ │ │ $3.00│ │
Sorting and│ │ │ │ │ │ to│ │
Packing │ │ │ │ │ │ $7.00│ │
═════════════╧════════╧══════╧═════╧════╧═════╧══════╧══════╧═══════════════
Footnote 11:
Clerks in the Chinese and Japanese small shops.
Footnote 12:
Home employment.
Footnote 13:
Largest number employed in winter season.
Footnote 14:
Maximum number.
(Note)—It was not possible to give seasonal or even weekly earnings in
the canneries, because of the irregularity both of the hours during
which the canneries were open, and the variation in the hours worked by
different employees.
GLOSSARY OF HAWAIIAN TERMS
ALOHA—Good will; friendship.
KONA—South; hot.
KAMAAINA—Old settlers; long time residents.
POPOLA—Wild spinach, valued as a food for its medicinal properties.
LEI—A garland for the neck or hat made of flowers, shells, seeds, etc.
POI—Pounded root of the Taro plant—the staple native food.
TAPA—A stencilled material made by the pounded fibre of a native tree;
and formerly used for making the chief article of dress by the
natives.
LAUHALA—A native shrub, growing ten to fifteen feet in height, with
lance-like leaves which when dried are used for mats, baskets,
etc.
PAPAIA—A native fruit, somewhat like a muskmelon.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
1. Silently corrected typographical errors and variations in spelling.
2. Anachronistic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings retained as
printed.
3. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.
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