SEAMSTRESSES AND NEEDLEWOMEN
The seamstress investigation developed two interesting facts: i. e., that the supply of workers is not keeping pace with the demand; and that the seamstresses at present available are for the most part self-trained.
A circular sent to 250 women who have households in Honolulu brought 110 replies, of which 8 stated that no seamstress was employed because of scarcity or inefficiency; 78 employed a seamstress regularly in periods varying from one week to eleven months, but for the most part from three to six weeks in the year. Of these more than half complained either of incompetence or slowness. Seamstresses who had served with dressmakers were the best paid and most satisfactory; but they formed a small group of only eleven. The majority were found satisfactory for plain sewing, but incapable of planning work, or incompetent in execution.
The remarks in reports are generally as follows:
“Satisfactory if watched.”
“I have been able to get only one girl, who is entirely untrained, though willing.”
“Competent for plain sewing and mending.”
“Competent for plain work.”
“For very plain sewing and mending her work is very neat.”
“Qualified for plain sewing; not to cut or fit.”
“I do not employ any at present, as I have found all I have tried incapable or unreliable.”
Forty-eight report paying from $2.00 to $3.00 a day, which always includes lunch, and often breakfast and carfare. The remainder paying $1.00, $1.50 and $1.75 a day. There is an opportunity in this field for a number—perhaps fifty—competent workers.
The day is as a rule eight and a half hours long, beginning at eight in the morning and ending at five in the afternoon.No one nationality can be said to give more satisfactory service than another, although the Portuguese are by far the most numerous. The reports cover:
Five dressmakers employ about 30 girls, whom they pay from $3.00 to $15.00 a week, the lower amount stated in each case as being paid to apprentices. The dressmakers report eight and one-half hours a day, and one states that she gives a half holiday on Saturday and extra pay for overtime. The majority of the dressmakers’ assistants are Portuguese, and these are considered the most efficient workers. A Japanese girl in one shop is also giving satisfaction, but Hawaiians and half-Chinese are not reported on favorably.
Japanese maids are in some instances being trained by their mistresses as seamstresses, and several Japanese women are now going out by the day, but none were reported in the investigation and no definite information could be secured concerning them.
Girls working in other establishments, however, report ten and eleven hours’ work, at low wages; and a shop manager who employs girls for alterations states he has had complaints from dressmakers’ employes that they did not receive their pay. In other instances they complained of not being paid promptly.
This charge is a common one in the dressmaking business, the proprietors of certain New York establishments saying their bills were neglected for so long a period—some customers, usually women of wealth, paying their bills only once in six months—that their own capital became exhausted.
Each of the department stores employs from one to three alteration hands, who are paid from $10 to $15 a week, the former being the amount paid two Hawaiian girls, who were considered by their employers to be slower and less energetic than the Portuguese woman who received $15 a week.
In the millinery shops the girls in the work rooms would be considerably benefitted by a preliminary course in sewing. They now begin their apprenticeship with no salary at all in two shops; a salary of from $1.00 to $2.00 is paid where the apprentice also delivers parcels and runs errands.
There are only a dozen or fifteen workers in the millinery shops, and it does not seem worth while in this community to give a millinery course for trade purposes.
There is a large demand for needlework, and the shops taking orders for it and also having articles on sale, report a thriving business. The workers earn very little, however, the average among a dozen women talked with being from fifty to sixty cents a day, while some earn only thirty cents. This is the usual state of affairs among the makers of hand work, as indeed in most home industries. The shopkeepers say they are handicapped by the fact that the same women who work for them also work for private customers, and underbid them. One shop maintains that it earns only a 10% commission and its stamping charges. Another shop employs Portuguese women on plantations and says it not only pays their fare into town when they come for work, but that work is often taken out to the plantations at the shop’s expense. It was not possible to visit any of these plantation workers and learn what they earn.
The work offered for sale in most of the shops indicates that training in the designing and selecting of patterns would be desirable; and none of the shops show the pillow laces, so well made as by the girls of the Industrial School.