Part 12

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.