Part 8

There is no question but that a large factor in the reason for Hawaiian girls entering the wage-earning field will be found in the fact that numbers of them are the illegitimate daughters of white men who have made no provision for either them or their mothers. Unmarried mothers are almost, without exception, taken care of with their babies by their own families, and it is difficult to make them think seriously of the future of the fatherless little one, since they are themselves still so close to the promiscuity in sex relations of the early Hawaiian days. This type of girl, however, is by no means to be considered representative of that portion of the race which has had opportunity and careful training; and the mother of numerous illegitimate children is likely to be most careful of her daughter’s upbringing and conduct.

JAPANESE.

The kimonoed figures of the Japanese women and girls shambling gaily along form an attractive part of Honolulu’s street life. Here they enjoy a social liberty undreamed of in their native land, and the taste of it may be said to have gone to their heads. Few young women even of the economically independent families are held to the rigid regime which Japanese custom prescribes; and while here and there a girl comes through her school course with the same ideals of freedom which the American girl has come to accept as a matter of course, on the majority of Japanese girls it has had a much more violent reaction.

They are the fighters among the women wage-earners of the city, as are the men among those of their own sex, although ably seconded in this respect by the Spanish. The latter, however, are present in such small numbers that they do not play an important part in the life of the city. The Japanese who come to Hawaii are almost entirely peasants and speak a patois. As wage-earners they have bettered themselves immeasurably. Those with whom I have spoken are enthusiastic about the opportunity here. They are slowly drawing away from the plantations and are concentrating in the pineapple fields and small truck farms near the city. A number of them told me that the discrepancy between the cost of living and wages in Japan was rapidly bringing about an acute condition of affairs—that women and girls were being ground up like chaff in the industrial enterprises of their native land.

One finds few Japanese families in the tenements, the majority of small shopkeepers living in the cottages back of their stores. The tenements have their quota of Japanese, of course, but this is almost entirely made up of single men or of couples newly married.

The generation which has been educated in the public schools—as well as in their own Japanese schools for the children attend both—is highly spoken of by both instructors and employers. Their privilege to vote will make their dual citizenship a matter which will soon require final adjustment.

The women who are entering now come as picture brides; and whereas a generation ago few Japanese children were born in Hawaii, abortionists abounded among them, the past five years has brought a change and families of at least moderate size are now the rule and are found in every part of the community, characteristically assimilating everything educational and commercial.

In the Japanese, as in the Chinese home, one fails to find the supposed rice and tea diet of the Oriental family. Unlike the Chinese wage-earners’ families who eat no vegetables but rice and the dried mushrooms from the Orient, the Japanese are very fond of cabbage, turnips, and all kinds of beans, and eat a great deal of all, as well as of rice. Fish, fresh or dried, is also a favorite article of food.

The women are not strong physically, but perform hard and exhausting work, keeping up through sheer force of spirit—the national philosophy: Bushido.

CHINESE.

Only since the breaking up of the old dynasty and the establishment of the republic—with its votes for women—have Chinese girls and women become wage-earners outside of the home. Their entrance into the occupations has been effected by a phalanx of women and girls of all ages, from the grandmother of fifty or more down to seven and eight year old children.

The wives and daughters of the merchant class are still at home, many of them being “shut in” on reaching their fourteenth year until their marriage to an unknown man—the eminently practical Chinese way of dealing with the “silly age.” Even these shut-in girls, however, are coming to sewing classes at the Mission schools to learn English and sewing. But why teach them to make Irish crochet bags and embroidered linen center pieces when their own beautiful Chinese embroideries are so much asked for in the Chinese shops by tourists?

The wives and daughters of the skilled and unskilled working men are finding their way into every sort of occupation, and everywhere they are making enviable records for themselves for ability, intelligence and reliability. Within the next five years the Japanese woman will have a strong competitor—one who by her training and inheritance will perhaps bring about a higher standard of stability as well as habits of work.

The Chinese employer finds it more economical to pay his men $20 a month and to feed them well himself, rather than pay him a somewhat more advanced wage and take the risk of his being sufficiently well fed at home to maintain his working efficiency. Clerks in the smaller Chinese shops, carpenters employed by Chinese builders, painters, etc., are therefore paid in this manner, and their families must bear the resulting hardships. Four or five children mean that the wife must also be a wage-earner, and the children too as soon as they are old enough—often before. But although a rice and tea diet is popularly supposed to prevail among the Chinese of this class, the only family I found subsisting on such a diet was doing so because the father had had a long illness and was paying off a debt he had contracted.

A trip through the tenements at dinner time revealed nothing more simple than a bowl of rice crowned by a plump portion of fish, which was being absorbed by a group of children in one of the alleys. Other kitchens showed pots of stewed mushrooms, soy, green salad, or fish; but always accompanied by a bowl of rice, and of course, a pot of tea.

The tenement rooms of the Chinese families are the most attractive of any seen. The furnishings are simple, and there are always pots of flowers and ferns at the door. The women are friendly, and chat freely of their affairs so far as vocabulary will permit. Next door, however, one may find a bare room occupied by two or three men who have no families; and two or three hours later they will be there gambling and opium-smoking, breaking up the cheerful homelike aspect of the place.

In the cottages, which were often occupied by two families, the women were watering their garden patches, complaining the while that their “men too much long work, no home.” These are the wives of the clerks in the larger shops, or of merchants. Women from the adjoining cottages came to their doors and nodded a smiling greeting. All of them are much interested in the suffrage movement which under the leadership of prominent Hawaiian women is agitating Honolulu, and all vehemently say that they “laik work.”

The girls and women for the most part still wear their comfortable, becoming native costume of blue or lavender cotton; and the former especially are exceedingly attractive, with their bright faces, slender bodies and long thick braids of black hair.

Prostitution and sex immorality is almost unknown and even the polygamous household is falling into disfavor, especially with the second wives.

It will be interesting to note what their emancipation will bring to the coming generation.

PORTUGUESE.

The Portuguese form quite a distinct element in the community. It is curious, in discussing races in Hawaii, to hear “Portuguese and White” written and spoken of. The fact that there are a number of families of the Cape Verde or black Portuguese type in Hawaii has tended to differentiate the Portuguese as a whole.

Their presence here is wholly artificial, brought about by the assisted immigration program of the Sugar Planters’ Association; and they are the favorite workers on the best plantations. Once a Portuguese decides to remain in the country he loses no time in acquiring literally his own “vine and fig tree.”

This nationality shows the strongest contrasts of any in Honolulu, being at once the most thrifty, the largest alms-asking, the most efficient working and most hopelessly offending child laboring and school evading element in the population. A logical explanation is offered by their Consul who lays the blame for the mendicancy on the Portuguese nabobs who became millionaires by exploiting the natives in Brazil, and then returned to their own country and made their peace with God by endowing Portugal with every sort of eleemosynary institution possible to create.

Their thrift is the result of the habit of work centuries old, while the ingrained habit which fathers of all civilized nations have of raising large families and retiring from work to live on their children’s earnings at the earliest feasible time is one of the principal factors everywhere in making child labor laws a necessity. Not until there are sufficient school accommodations in Honolulu will the truant officer have an adequate basis for enforcing the compulsory school attendance law.

The girls and women are well liked by employers. They are reserved and have a hint of melancholy in their temperament which is quite foreign to other workers in Honolulu.

Portuguese families are almost a rarity in the tenement houses. The meanest sort of cottage is preferred by them, where they may cultivate their own vegetables and raise their own chickens.

While the majority of the immigrants came from the same social class, many nice distinctions have sprung up with the passing of years and the acquiring of new standards, and it is therefore impossible to characterize the Portuguese population or even the Portuguese wage-earners in Honolulu as a whole, with anything like the definiteness distinguishing the workers of other races.