SECTION 1. The term “establishment” where used in this Act shall mean

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.