Part 10

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: