SHOPS AND STORES
The five dry-goods shops employ an aggregate of about seventy-five saleswomen, made up of an equal number of Americans and Portuguese, with a sprinkling of Hawaiians and Germans.
The rooms are large, no artificial light is used, and there are no basement salesrooms.
The working day commences at 7:45 in the morning and closes at 5 o’clock in the afternoon. There is an hour’s allowance for lunch.
Three of the shops close at noon on Saturday for four months of the year, and two at 1 o’clock during June, July and August. One shop has reopened from 7 to 9 o’clock Saturday evenings, but the proprietor says it has not paid and that he intends discontinuing the practice the first of the year. There are no fines or penalties except censure or dismissal for incompetence. There are rules, however, to insure courtesy to customers and systematic methods of salesmanship. The lowest salary paid beginners is $2.50. They are advanced with reasonable rapidity, one shop raising wages from $2.50 to $5.00 for a year’s service in one instance; and from $3.50 to $7.50 in seven months in another. One manager employs none but experienced help and has no saleswoman earning less than $9.00. Another has a minimum wage of $5.00, raising it to $6.00 after a month’s trial. He says if a girl does not earn a $6.00 rate within a month he does not wish to employ her.
A list of sixty-nine salaries verified as correct by employers and employes is as follows:
Two weeks’ vacation with pay is given by three shops; and a week with pay by the other two.
A number of the saleswomen are married. One who left her position when she married went back to it after a long illness of her husband left them in straitened circumstances, and she has remained at work ever since. She has no children and says she “feels safer for her old age.” Most of the girls say simply they are working to earn a living, and they “like this way of doing it.”
The best paid employes are from “the coast”—some from New York—those earning $15.00 or less a week being Honolulans.
All the managers agree that native girls are desirable saleswomen, but that they lack energy. One manager said he would like to employ more native girls if he could secure efficient ones, because of their amiability.
There are a fair number of openings for new employes in the shops each year—from fifteen to twenty in all—and each manager has a waiting list.
The requirements are: a fair knowledge of arithmetic, a good appearance and good English. The saleswomen are not required to wear black because of the heat; but there is little extreme dressing, and the general tone of the shops is exceedingly good. Perhaps it will not be out of place to say a word in regard to the surprisingly quick time in which new stylesreach Honolulu shops. All the buying is done in New York, and in general an excellent stock of goods is carried.
In the book, florist, jewelry, curio and art shops, and in the various stores, there are about 100 young women employed, some of whom combine office duties, bookkeeping or stenography with selling in the shop. The wages vary from $5.00 a week—paid the small Chinese beginner of fifteen—who has here clothed herself in American garb—to $85.00 a month for years of experience and a multiplicity of duties. The average wage is from $10.00 to $12.00 a week, and the majority of the saleswomen are Spanish, Portuguese and Irish. The restaurants employ girls as cashiers, but there are no waitresses.
These clerkships afford excellent employment for untrained girls with good manners, a good appearance and average intelligence, and during the winter season an extra force is maintained in practically all the shops.