The Industrial Condition of Women and Girls in Honolulu: A Social StudyBlascoer, Frances
General
The Industrial Condition of Women and Girls in Honolulu: A Social Study
Blascoer, Frances
Child labor -- Hawaii -- Honolulu; Honolulu (Hawaii) -- Social conditions; Women -- Employment -- Hawaii -- Honolulu
The Portuguese form quite a distinct element in the community. It is
curious, in discussing races in Hawaii, to hear “Portuguese and White”
written and spoken of. The fact that there are a number of families of
the Cape Verde or black Portuguese type in Hawaii has tended to
differentiate the Portuguese as a whole.
Their presence here is wholly artificial, brought about by the assisted
immigration program of the Sugar Planters’ Association; and they are the
favorite workers on the best plantations. Once a Portuguese decides to
remain in the country he loses no time in acquiring literally his own
“vine and fig tree.”
This nationality shows the strongest contrasts of any in Honolulu, being
at once the most thrifty, the largest alms-asking, the most efficient
working and most hopelessly offending child laboring and school evading
element in the population. A logical explanation is offered by their
Consul who lays the blame for the mendicancy on the Portuguese nabobs
who became millionaires by exploiting the natives in Brazil, and then
returned to their own country and made their peace with God by endowing
Portugal with every sort of eleemosynary institution possible to create.
Their thrift is the result of the habit of work centuries old, while the
ingrained habit which fathers of all civilized nations have of raising
large families and retiring from work to live on their children’s
earnings at the earliest feasible time is one of the principal factors
everywhere in making child labor laws a necessity. Not until there are
sufficient school accommodations in Honolulu will the truant officer
have an adequate basis for enforcing the compulsory school attendance
law.
The girls and women are well liked by employers. They are reserved and
have a hint of melancholy in their temperament which is quite foreign to
other workers in Honolulu.
Portuguese families are almost a rarity in the tenement houses. The
meanest sort of cottage is preferred by them, where they may cultivate
their own vegetables and raise their own chickens.
While the majority of the immigrants came from the same social class,
many nice distinctions have sprung up with the passing of years and the
acquiring of new standards, and it is therefore impossible to
characterize the Portuguese population or even the Portuguese
wage-earners in Honolulu as a whole, with anything like the definiteness
distinguishing the workers of other races.
_TEACHERS._
Honolulu’s teaching force, like its population, includes representatives
of the four corners of the earth:
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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