Part 17

“Fatigue and Efficiency,” Part II, p. 290.

Several pages of testimony from all over the world are submitted in support of the statement that “even the lightest work becomes totally exhausting when carried on for an excessive length of time.” She quotes from Dr. Ludwig Hirt’s “The Disease of Working People”: “No attitude of the body is harmful in itself; only in prolonging it until it produces harmful results; all the well-known disturbances, such as varicose veins, etc., etc., arise not through sitting or standing, but through excessively prolonged sitting or standing.”

Footnote 10:

“Fatigue and Efficiency,” Part II, p. 321.

For the protection of their women workers more than thirty American States have enacted laws limiting the hours of employment for women; but only three States,—Massachusetts, Indiana and Nebraska,—have passed a law in such form as to make it enforcible. Miss Goldmark defines “the rigid law, which prohibits overtime and night work,” as “one which provides fixed boundaries for working hours. It protects women from working after a specified hour at night, and more than a given number of hours by the day or week. The best exemplar of this kind of law in the United States is the Massachusetts statute which prohibits the employment of women in textile mills more than ten hours in one day, or more than fifty-four hours in one week, or before six o’clock in the morning or after six o’clock in the evening.... The law is final. Its provisions are clear cut. Employers, employes and inspectors know without disagreement or argument what constitutes a violation. Work continued after the specified closing hour is conclusive evidence of violation.”

As showing the beneficial effect of shorter hours on output, Miss Goldmark quotes at length from the testimony of various Massachusetts employers of labor. The Treasurer of the Atlantic Mills, in Lawrence, stated: “We saw an improvement in the operatives directly after adopting ten hours.... We have had more continuous and uninterrupted work throughout the year than before.” The Report of the Massachusetts District Police states: “One manufacturer stated to me a short time ago that he had run his mill sixty-six hours per week, supposing that by so doing he increased the production nearly one-eleventh, but was persuaded ... to reduce his running time to sixty hours per week, and at the end of six months found that the production of his mill had increased nearly ten per cent, while the quality of work done was more perfect.”

The entire question of the long day is as yet in its incipiency in Hawaii, and the closing paragraph of Miss Goldmark’s preface is peculiarly pertinent. She says:

“In the main opposition to laws protecting working women and children has come from the unenlightened employer, who has been blind to his own larger interests and who has always seen in every attempt to protect the workers an interference with business and dividends. To this day it is the short-sighted and narrow-minded spirit of money-making that is the most persistent enemy of measures designed to save the workers from exhaustion and to conserve their working capacities. Regular, continuous labor and exertion is as necessary for the worker’s health as it is for subsistence, and if legislation regulating the workday had sought to invade legitimate work, it would long ago have defeated its own end....

“First the new industry, then exploitation, then the demand for some measure of protection—such is the universal story. Nor is this a chance sequence. It is the relentless record of history, the more impressive for its unconscious testimony to a waste of human effort and experience, in retrospect scarcely credible among a thinking people, yet in our very midst persisting steadily to this day.”

Hawaiian employers, most of whom are kamaainas, sincerely interested in the welfare of the Hawaiian girls and women, have not given adequate thought to the broader social problems of their employes. Kind treatment, good air and light do much to mitigate matters, but no woman or girl can work standing continuously for ten or more hours a day and retain her health. Nor will she in this way become a homemaker, and an intelligent mother and member of the community.

AN ACT

RESTRICTING THE HOURS OF LABOR OF WOMEN AND CHILDREN UNDER THE AGE OF SIXTEEN YEARS.

Be It Enacted by the Legislature of the Territory of Hawaii:

SECTION 1. The term “establishment” where used in this Act shall mean any place within this Territory other than where domestic or agricultural labor is employed; where men, women or children are engaged and paid a salary or wages by any person, firm or corporation, and where such men, women or children are employes in the general acceptance of that term.

SECTION 2. No minor under the age of sixteen years, and no female shall be employed in any establishment for a longer period than sixty (60) hours in any one week nor for a longer period than ten (10) hours in any one day.

SECTION 3. No minor under sixteen years and no female shall be employed or suffered to work in any establishment before the hour of six in the morning, or after the hour of six in the evening.

SECTION 4. Retail mercantile establishments shall be exempt from the provisions of Sections 2 and 3 hereof during a period of ten days beginning with the fifteenth day of December and ending with the twenty-fourth day of the same month.

SECTION 5. Any person, firm or corporation violating any provision of this Act shall, upon conviction, be fined in a sum not less than One Hundred Dollars ($100.00) or more than Five Hundred Dollars ($500.00) for each day any person is employed, permitted or suffered to work in violation of this Act.

SECTION 6. This Act shall be in force and effect from and after the date 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.