Part 13

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%, 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.