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.

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:—

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.