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.

An employer who was genuinely anxious to do his best for his employes asked me seriously: “What would the girls do with any more money if they had it?” He was quite willing to consider a living wage, and also spoke of profit-sharing with employes.

The majority of employers, when spoken to concerning the insufficiency of wages paid, point out that their employes have homes in which there are other bread-winners; and that with few exceptions they are not entirely dependent on their own efforts.

One special group of seven women was analyzed. Each received a flat wage of $3.00 a week in an occupation requiring no skill, and in which no advance in wages could be received until two years’ service had been rendered, when $4.00 was paid. Even here one girl—a Japanese—who had been employed over two years, had received no advance.

Of this group three women were married, one was widowed and three were young girls. One of the married women, whose husband was in jail and who had a three-year-old child—the victim of infantile paralysis—was receiving her rent from a church society. The woman who was widowed also had her rent paid by a church society. Two of the girls received help from their respective fathers in addition to their living expenses, and one woman supported herself and invalid husband on her earnings in this position and in the canneries where she worked during the season with her grandchild, the two earning about $8.00 a week. She was a wiry, industrious Hawaiian woman of about sixty, and it took much persuasion to get her story from her. The Hawaiians are not beggars and few of the old stock have been known to seek alms.

The proprietor, on having these facts called to his attention, said that he could hire Chinese boys at $3.00 a week and have the work done more efficiently. Yet even Chinese boys dependent on their own efforts cannot subsist decently on $3.00 a week.

In her address before the National Conference of Charities and Corrections in Cleveland, held in June, 1912, Mrs. Florence Kelly, the dean and veritably the mother of industrial investigation, said:

“We cannot longer escape the knowledge that there is no more efficient cause of wholesale destitution in the United States than industry. It can be said with truth that poverty is the regular and inevitable byproduct of our present industry, as wealth is its normal product. We carry on our industry to produce wealth, and incidentally we produce wholesale poverty.

“Insufficient wages underlie a vast proportion of the need for correctional and reformatory work. They entail upon the community child labor, tuberculosis, underfeeding, lack of refreshing sleep and consequent nervous breakdown.

“They underlie industrial employment of mothers, whose neglected children fail in health and morals. The children in turn crowd the juvenile courts and custodial institutions....

“It behooves us all to put in practice as rapidly as we may some standard of payment for the working people having due relation to the expenditure of life itself, in the service of all, that is made by those who work for wages.”

A typical example of the spirit being developed among employers by a better knowledge of conditions is cited by Mrs. Kelley:

“A leading store in Boston—Filene’s—has for several months maintained a minimum wage of $8.00 a week. For many years this store had employed no one who had not finished the work of the eighth grade of the public schools. It has thus set for the whole country an example of retail trade as a field in which industry can be carried on under all the difficulties entailed by unlimited competition, with profit and success, and without producing poverty as its byproduct.”

In Honolulu working people can live comfortably on low wages,—in a greater degree of comfort than in any other community of which I have knowledge,—but in practically every family there is more than one wage-earner—the wife and children contributing their quota, however small.

Only the tenements, the best of which afford no decent privacy to families, are open to the man with a family who earns $1.00 or even $1.50 a day, if he is the sole wage-earner.

Your Oriental population is demonstrating its wish for better standards of living by the avidity with which it is building itself homes and sending its children to school.

Its morals will no doubt improve when, as a group of Chinese young people said to a Mission class leader, they “have a better example set them by representative white citizens.”

I believe that a Commission appointed by the Governor to look into wage conditions in Hawaii, and their relation to the cost of living, would clarify the whole Hawaiian labor situation, both at home and abroad.

Such a commission for the study of the wages of women and minors, was created in Massachusetts in 1911, as follows:

“Resolved, That the Governor, with the advice and consent of the Council, shall appoint a Commission of five persons, citizens of the Commonwealth, of whom at least one shall be a woman, one shall be a representative of labor, and one shall be a representative of employers, to study the matter of wages.”

Its report recommended an Act not only establishing a Minimum Wage Board, but also providing for the determination of minimum wages for women and minors.

Sections 3 and 4 of this Act provide:

“Section 3. It shall be the duty of the commission to inquire into the wages paid to the female employes in any occupation in the Commonwealth if the commission has reason to believe that the wages paid to a substantial number of such employes are inadequate to supply the necessary cost of living and to maintain the worker in health.

“Section 4. If after such investigation the commission is of the opinion that in the occupation in question the wages paid to a substantial number of female employes are inadequate to supply the necessary cost of living and to maintain the worker in health, the commission shall establish a wage board, consisting of not less than six representatives of employers in the occupation in question and of an equal number of representatives of the female employes in said occupation and of one or more disinterested persons appointed by the commission to represent the public, but the representatives of the public shall not exceed one-half of the number of representatives of either of the other parties. The commission shall designate the chairman from among the representatives of the public, and shall make rules and regulations governing the selection of members and the modes of procedure of the boards, and shall exercise exclusive jurisdiction over all questions arising with reference to the validity of the procedure and of the determination of the boards. The members of wage boards shall be compensated at the same rate as jurors; they shall be allowed the performance of their duties, these payments to be made from the appropriation for the expenses of the commission.”

Mrs. Kelly says, concerning it,—and I can think of no more fitting close to a report on industrial conditions:—

“We have never before brought to bear the experience of the people most closely concerned. These are the employers, the workers, the consumers, not the bondholders and stockholders. The employers know, better than any other persons can possibly know, the meaning of the pay-roll in relation to their particular branch of industry. The workers know, as no one else can, what it costs to bring up a family in a particular place in a given year, and what; if anything, can be put away for the future out of a weekly wage. When, therefore, these two participants, and representatives of the consuming public, pool their knowledge and correlate the wages with the cost of living in their community, in the full light of publicity, all the available, intimate knowledge and practical experience is brought to bear upon the wage scale thus established.

“This is a new extension of democracy into a field of industrial bargaining. It gives the moral and legal support of the State to its weakest economic elements, to the women and children. By thus turning on the light, it makes real, for the first time, that which has by the economists and the courts been assumed to exist, but has not yet existed: equality of the two contracting parties. It gives effect to the will of those who have in the past been mere pawns in the hands of masters who have played the game on terms laid down by themselves alone. It gives votes to women in a field in which women most sorely need them, in the determination of their wages. It tends, for the first time, to substitute justice through self-government in industry, for charity.”

(Note)—It was not possible to give seasonal or even weekly earnings in the canneries, because of the irregularity both of the hours during which the canneries were open, and the variation in the hours worked by different employees.