of its approval.
WAGES
As stated in the report of the Massachusetts Commission on Minimum Wage
Boards (page 8): “To obtain an accurate view of the condition of labor,
so far as women and minors are concerned, it is especially of service to
obtain, if possible, not only the wage schedules, but the actual weekly
and annual variation of these earnings, with ages and experience,
irregularity of employment, the economic status of the workers in so far
as they are aided by other members of a family group, or by charity, or
are themselves called on to support others.”
For many reasons it was not possible to exactly work out all these
details in Honolulu. Information was, as a rule, to be had from the
workers only during the lunch hour and after work was finished, and as
many of them did not know their street and number, a knowledge of
conditions was obtained by visiting in the homes in various parts of the
city, both during the day and at night, rather than by following up
individual workers. Only five girls could remember what amounts their
pay envelopes contained for three consecutive weeks. Then, too, the
great majority of women of all nationalities spoke no English.
Employers were interested and helpful, and I am indebted to them for
much definite information, which was in practically all instances
corroborated by the statements of the workers themselves; and it is
mainly on employers’ information that I have based my statements of
wages paid. The workers appear on the pay-roll by number, names not
being known as a rule, and here again it was impossible to follow up
individuals.
In general, unskilled wage-earners are almost without exception aided by
other members of a family group or by charity, the latter group
including those called on to assist others, and those who low wages
force to accept shelter or food, or both, either from friends or
relatives, or from homes philanthropically provided.
As shown in the Cost of Living Schedule, the minimum subsistence cost in
Honolulu is $5.00 a week; whereas the wages earned by beginners vary
from $2.50 to $3.50 in occupations offering employment to only a few
workers, to a minimum of $4.80 in the canneries; while the majority of
laundry workers, with several years’ experience, earn only $20.00 a
month.
The fixing of minimum wages for women and minors otherwise than by the
law of supply and demand, or the sense of social responsibility of
employers, has been in force in Australia since 1896, through the
operation of a Minimum Wage Board, while England and Massachusetts
created such Boards in 1910 and 1912, respectively.
The thought of such a Board in Hawaii at the present time may be quite
as amusing as the action of the International Association for Labor
Legislation (called by the Swiss Federal Council and participated in by
official representatives of fourteen European powers) prohibiting night
work for women in Uganda, Ceylon, Fiji Islands, Leeward Islands and
Trinidad; yet, as Miss Goldmark says, in commenting on this action:
“Experience has taught the wisdom of legislating before industry is
present.”
Industry is, however, present in Hawaii, and its growth has been so
rapid that, as stated before, employers have not considered seriously
the questions involved in women’s work.
An employer who was genuinely anxious to do his best for his employes
asked me seriously: “What would the girls do with any more money if they
had it?” He was quite willing to consider a living wage, and also spoke
of profit-sharing with employes.
The majority of employers, when spoken to concerning the insufficiency
of wages paid, point out that their employes have homes in which there
are other bread-winners; and that with few exceptions they are not
entirely dependent on their own efforts.
One special group of seven women was analyzed. Each received a flat wage
of $3.00 a week in an occupation requiring no skill, and in which no
advance in wages could be received until two years’ service had been
rendered, when $4.00 was paid. Even here one girl—a Japanese—who had
been employed over two years, had received no advance.
Of this group three women were married, one was widowed and three were
young girls. One of the married women, whose husband was in jail and who
had a three-year-old child—the victim of infantile paralysis—was
receiving her rent from a church society. The woman who was widowed also
had her rent paid by a church society. Two of the girls received help
from their respective fathers in addition to their living expenses, and
one woman supported herself and invalid husband on her earnings in this
position and in the canneries where she worked during the season with
her grandchild, the two earning about $8.00 a week. She was a wiry,
industrious Hawaiian woman of about sixty, and it took much persuasion
to get her story from her. The Hawaiians are not beggars and few of the
old stock have been known to seek alms.
The proprietor, on having these facts called to his attention, said that
he could hire Chinese boys at $3.00 a week and have the work done more
efficiently. Yet even Chinese boys dependent on their own efforts cannot
subsist decently on $3.00 a week.
In her address before the National Conference of Charities and
Corrections in Cleveland, held in June, 1912, Mrs. Florence Kelly, the
dean and veritably the mother of industrial investigation, said:
“We cannot longer escape the knowledge that there is no more
efficient cause of wholesale destitution in the United States than
industry. It can be said with truth that poverty is the regular and
inevitable byproduct of our present industry, as wealth is its
normal product. We carry on our industry to produce wealth, and
incidentally we produce wholesale poverty.
“Insufficient wages underlie a vast proportion of the need for
correctional and reformatory work. They entail upon the community
child labor, tuberculosis, underfeeding, lack of refreshing sleep
and consequent nervous breakdown.
“They underlie industrial employment of mothers, whose neglected
children fail in health and morals. The children in turn crowd the
juvenile courts and custodial institutions....
“It behooves us all to put in practice as rapidly as we may some
standard of payment for the working people having due relation to
the expenditure of life itself, in the service of all, that is made
by those who work for wages.”
A typical example of the spirit being developed among employers by a
better knowledge of conditions is cited by Mrs. Kelley:
“A leading store in Boston—Filene’s—has for several months
maintained a minimum wage of $8.00 a week. For many years this store
had employed no one who had not finished the work of the eighth
grade of the public schools. It has thus set for the whole country
an example of retail trade as a field in which industry can be
carried on under all the difficulties entailed by unlimited
competition, with profit and success, and without producing poverty
as its byproduct.”
In Honolulu working people can live comfortably on low wages,—in a
greater degree of comfort than in any other community of which I have
knowledge,—but in practically every family there is more than one
wage-earner—the wife and children contributing their quota, however
small.
Only the tenements, the best of which afford no decent privacy to
families, are open to the man with a family who earns $1.00 or even
$1.50 a day, if he is the sole wage-earner.
Your Oriental population is demonstrating its wish for better standards
of living by the avidity with which it is building itself homes and
sending its children to school.
Its morals will no doubt improve when, as a group of Chinese young
people said to a Mission class leader, they “have a better example set
them by representative white citizens.”
I believe that a Commission appointed by the Governor to look into wage
conditions in Hawaii, and their relation to the cost of living, would
clarify the whole Hawaiian labor situation, both at home and abroad.
Such a commission for the study of the wages of women and minors, was
created in Massachusetts in 1911, as follows:
“_Resolved_, That the Governor, with the advice and consent of the
Council, shall appoint a Commission of five persons, citizens of the
Commonwealth, of whom at least one shall be a woman, one shall be a
representative of labor, and one shall be a representative of
employers, to study the matter of wages.”
Its report recommended an Act not only establishing a Minimum Wage
Board, but also providing for the determination of minimum wages for
women and minors.
Sections 3 and 4 of this Act provide:
“SECTION 3. It shall be the duty of the commission to inquire into
the wages paid to the female employes in any occupation in the
Commonwealth if the commission has reason to believe that the wages
paid to a substantial number of such employes are inadequate to
supply the necessary cost of living and to maintain the worker in
health.
“SECTION 4. If after such investigation the commission is of the
opinion that in the occupation in question the wages paid to a
substantial number of female employes are inadequate to supply the
necessary cost of living and to maintain the worker in health, the
commission shall establish a wage board, consisting of not less than
six representatives of employers in the occupation in question and
of an equal number of representatives of the female employes in said
occupation and of one or more disinterested persons appointed by the
commission to represent the public, but the representatives of the
public shall not exceed one-half of the number of representatives of
either of the other parties. The commission shall designate the
chairman from among the representatives of the public, and shall
make rules and regulations governing the selection of members and
the modes of procedure of the boards, and shall exercise exclusive
jurisdiction over all questions arising with reference to the
validity of the procedure and of the determination of the boards.
The members of wage boards shall be compensated at the same rate as
jurors; they shall be allowed the performance of their duties, these
payments to be made from the appropriation for the expenses of the
commission.”
Mrs. Kelly says, concerning it,—and I can think of no more fitting close
to a report on industrial conditions:—
“We have never before brought to bear the experience of the people
most closely concerned. These are the employers, the workers, the
consumers, not the bondholders and stockholders. The employers know,
better than any other persons can possibly know, the meaning of the
pay-roll in relation to their particular branch of industry. The
workers know, as no one else can, what it costs to bring up a family
in a particular place in a given year, and what; if anything, can be
put away for the future out of a weekly wage. When, therefore, these
two participants, and representatives of the consuming public, pool
their knowledge and correlate the wages with the cost of living in
their community, in the full light of publicity, all the available,
intimate knowledge and practical experience is brought to bear upon
the wage scale thus established.
“This is a new extension of democracy into a field of industrial
bargaining. It gives the moral and legal support of the State to its
weakest economic elements, to the women and children. By thus
turning on the light, it makes real, for the first time, that which
has by the economists and the courts been assumed to exist, but has
not yet existed: equality of the two contracting parties. It gives
effect to the will of those who have in the past been mere pawns in
the hands of masters who have played the game on terms laid down by
themselves alone. It gives votes to women in a field in which women
most sorely need them, in the determination of their wages. It
tends, for the first time, to substitute justice through
self-government in industry, for charity.”
Respectfully submitted,
FRANCES BLASCOER.
SUMMARY OF EMPLOYMENT FOR WOMEN AND GIRLS.
═════════════╤════════╤══════╤═════╤════════════════════════╤═══════════════
OCCUPATION │ Number │Season│Hours│ WAGES │QUALIFICATIONS:
│Employed│ │ Per │ │
│ │ │ Day │ │
─────────────┼────────┼──────┼─────┼────┬─────┬──────┬──────┼───────────────
〃 │ 〃 │ 〃 │ 〃 │Hour│ Day │ Week │Month │ 〃
─────────────┼────────┼──────┼─────┼────┼─────┼──────┼──────┼───────────────
Teachers │ 163│ All│ 5½│ │ │ │ │
Public │ 40│ year│ │ │ │ │$50.00│Teachers
School │ │ 10│ │ │ │ │ to│Certificate.
Private │ │ mos.│ │ │ │ │$83.33│
School │ │ │ │ │ │ │ 37.50│
│ │ │ │ │ │ │ to│
│ │ │ │ │ │ │125.00│
│ │ │ │ │ │ │ │
Nurses │ 75│ All│ │ │ │$25.00│ │Hospital
│ │ year│ │ │ │ to│ │Diploma.
│ │ │ │ │ │$30.00│ │
│ │ │ │ │ │ │ │
Stenographers│ 100│ All│ 7-8│ │ │ │ 35.00│English,
│ │ year│ │ │ │ │ to│Stenography and
│ │ │ │ │ │ │150.00│Typewriting.
│ │ │ │ │ │ │ │
Saleswomen │ 175│ All│ 8-14│ │ │ $2.50│ │English, good
and │ │yr[13]│ │ │ │ to│ │appearance,
Clerks[11] │ │ │ │ │ │$45.00│ │good manners.
│ │ │ │ │ │ │ │
Seamstresses │ 100│ All│ 8½-9│ │$1.00│ │ │
and Needle │ │ year│ │ │ to│ │ │
Women[12] │ │ │ │ │ 2.50│ │ │
│ │ │ │ │ .30│ │ │
│ │ │ │ │ to│ │ │
│ │ │ │ │ 1.00│ │ │
│ │ │ │ │ │ │ │
Laundry │ 150│ All│10-13│ │$3.50│ │ │
Employees │ │yr[13]│ │ │ to│ │ │
│ │ │ │ │$6.00│ │ │
│ │ │ │ │ │ │ │
Cannery │ 651[14]│4 mos.│ 10½│ .05│ │ │ │
Employees │ 142│ All│to 14│ to│ │ │ │
│ │ year│ │ .15│ │ │ │
│ │ │ │ │ │ │ │
Coffee │ 70│8 mos.│ 9│ │ │ $3.00│ │
Sorting and│ │ │ │ │ │ to│ │
Packing │ │ │ │ │ │ $7.00│ │
═════════════╧════════╧══════╧═════╧════╧═════╧══════╧══════╧═══════════════
Footnote 11:
Clerks in the Chinese and Japanese small shops.
Footnote 12:
Home employment.
Footnote 13:
Largest number employed in winter season.
Footnote 14:
Maximum number.
(Note)—It was not possible to give seasonal or even weekly earnings in
the canneries, because of the irregularity both of the hours during
which the canneries were open, and the variation in the hours worked by
different employees.
GLOSSARY OF HAWAIIAN TERMS
ALOHA—Good will; friendship.
KONA—South; hot.
KAMAAINA—Old settlers; long time residents.
POPOLA—Wild spinach, valued as a food for its medicinal properties.
LEI—A garland for the neck or hat made of flowers, shells, seeds, etc.
POI—Pounded root of the Taro plant—the staple native food.
TAPA—A stencilled material made by the pounded fibre of a native tree;
and formerly used for making the chief article of dress by the
natives.
LAUHALA—A native shrub, growing ten to fifteen feet in height, with
lance-like leaves which when dried are used for mats, baskets,
etc.
PAPAIA—A native fruit, somewhat like a muskmelon.
------------------------------------------------------------------------
TRANSCRIBER’S NOTES
1. Silently corrected typographical errors and variations in spelling.
2. Anachronistic, non-standard, and uncertain spellings retained as
printed.
3. Enclosed italics font in _underscores_.