IWILEI AND THE WORKERS
(Observations made at visits during the lunch hour and in the evening, to the stockades immediately adjoining the canneries, where the social evil has its generally recognized being in Honolulu.)
Up the long lane from the railroad station and past the penitentiary; then some tumbledown sheds in the last stages of decay but occupied by human beings; next a few cottages, reasonably well-kept and attractive, all of them rented for immoral purposes. Then the canneries themselves. But up this road, almost half a mile long, must come the women and girls who work in the three establishments offering practically all the work obtainable in Honolulu by unskilled workers. The only alternative to this route is the unsafe one across the railroad tracks. Not only must the workers come this way, but they must return home either through this district—meeting and being accosted by soldiers and citizens on their way to the dives—or else they must cross the railroad tracks, almost always after dark, with dim light down the alley and no light at all across the tracks.
Immediately beyond the canneries lies the remainder of the Iwilei district—running up almost to the cannery gates. In this section are the only lunch rooms available for the cannery employes. The girls and women must either come here, or must bring their lunch, or purchase the sweet rolls, cakes, candy and soda water which are the only refreshments sold by the Japanese who bring their lunch wagons to the cannery premises at noon and in the evening. Either course means a cold meal after five hours of work, with no place to sit down and eat it.
The restaurants of the district are surprisingly clean and all owned by Chinese. They fill to their capacity a few moments after 12 o’clock with men and women, boys and girls, of all nationalities. The bill of fare varies from coffee androlls for five cents to a dinner:—a bowl of soup with bread, accompanied by an egg or a plate of stew, for fifteen cents. A Chinese woman and a child—a girl about ten years old—shared a ten cent plate of rice and stew. Men and girls chaffed one another familiarly.
A tall, bony Korean made his lunch of coffee and sweet rolls. He said he had had the same thing for breakfast, before starting work at 7 o’clock, but sometimes varied this menu with a bowl of milk. He got his dinner at a restaurant in town for ten cents. He said he was working his way through school.
In another restaurant a Porto Rican woman sat in the corner smoking a cigarette. She spoke no English. Her neighbor at table was a young Hawaiian woman—an ex-teacher—who told us she had married and given up her school; but her husband earned only $35 a month driving a baker’s wagon, so she worked during the canning season. This particular restaurant stands between two of the most notorious resorts in the district.
As we left, a small, thin Hawaiian girl was about to enter the shop to buy a sweet to finish lunch. She and her grandmother worked together in one of the canneries. She had earned $4.50 the week previous. She said she was sixteen years old, but she did not look fourteen. Her grandmother, between canning seasons, earns $3 a week packing coffee. The grandfather has asthma and cannot work. The girl said they had only poi for each of their three meals, sometimes with a little dried fish or an onion for flavoring.
The women of the district, when asked about the cannery girls’ presence in the district, spontaneously expressed the opinion that “it was wrong for the little ones to come here.” They said keepers of houses in the district frequently accosted the girls in the restaurants; but they had not seen any of the girls go into the houses.
One of the women told us of a little Filipino wife, only fifteen years old, who worked in the cannery with her husband; but he had been sick and when the baby came they had no furniture and there was no money to provide the necessaries foreither mother or child. “And so” said M—— “we women just got together and made the baby clothes, and got her a bed and some things. Why,” she added shamefacedly, “you’d have thought it was a sewing circle, to look at us.”
We saw what I was told is a very rare thing indeed—a pure-blooded Hawaiian girl in one of the resorts. We spoke to her, and the Humane Officer, who was with me, and who spoke her native tongue, said the girl appeared to be weakminded.
The suggestion was offered by the foreman at one of the canneries that if a serious effort were made the district might be turned into a community of workingmen’s cottages. This seems a much more likely way of cleaning up the industrial district at any rate, than any process of law would be likely to lead to. If this could be done, and a club house established where hot luncheons would be served and a rest-room provided, it would indeed be replacing figs for thistles. No more promising place for establishing a basis for relationship with the girls who work in the canneries could be wished for than would be afforded by such a center.