Part 16

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.”

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,” 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.”

Footnote 9: