Another favorable feature characterizing the work in laundries here is the shifting of occupation made possible in small establishments. While one machine, a body-ironer for example,—on which 600 shirts may be turned out in one day, each shirt requiring ten motions, making a total of 6,000 motions of the arms and of the foot in operating the treadle,—is operated by the right foot, the collar-presser is a left-footed machine, and the girls are shifted from one machine to another, so that the strain on one part of the body exclusively is regulated. I asked one manager why this was not done in all laundries, and he said the difficulty lay in the fact that union wage scales were made for certain kinds of work; whereas he paid his employes by the month, raising wages according to ability and length of service. The fact that all the steam laundries are comparatively new has perhaps been the reason why the newer machine models, obviating the strains mentioned by Miss Butler, have been installed. There is, however, the same tendency to exact long hours of work in times of stress which is found everywhere in this business, one laundry reporting 87 hours of overwork in one month during the tourist season, making a thirteen-hour day, and as all work must be performed in a standing posture, this strain is unduly severe. The customary overtime is two evenings a week until nine or nine-thirty o’clock. Work commences in all the laundries at seven or seven-thirty in the morning and continues until five or five-thirty in the evening. Saturday is usually a half holiday. Processes are uniform in all the laundries. The bundle of laundry first goes to the marker, who gives it its distinguishing family or personal mark. It is then separated into white, colored and woolen articles, after which it goes to the washer, and is boiled in the large vats occupying one corner of the room. The washing is done by men—mostly Chinese—with the exception of the woolens and fine pieces, which are washed in another part of the room by the starch girls. The floors were wet about the washing machines, but there was no standing water, the drainage being good in all the laundries. After the clothes are washed they are put into the drying machines, huge metal vats with perforated inner baskets revolving rapidly and throwing out the water by centrifugal force. Accidents have been reported in other places caused by the uneven distribution of clothing in these inner baskets, which breaks them under the great force with which they revolve. They in turn cause the outer metal covering to break loose and whirl into the workroom. There is no record of such an accident, however, in Honolulu.