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
As the sliced pineapple is deposited onto the traveling web, the girl
next to the slicing machine, usually an experienced and efficient
worker, selects the most perfect slices—those having no flaws or
imperfect edges, and whitest in color. The next worker selects the next
grade, and so on down the table, the residue, unsuitable for canning,
going into the pulp tub. When she has a sufficient number of slices of
the proper grade, she makes a mound of them, turns an empty can down
over the mound, slips it off the sorting tray and places it right side
up on the tray for filled cans.
After the cans have been filled with the sliced pineapple and syrup,
they are taken to another machine which automatically places the cover
on the can and seals it.
The sealed cans are then taken on a tray to the cooking vat, where they
are lowered in boiling water onto a slowly moving platform, which
carries them, submerged, through the water for just a sufficient length
of time, gauged automatically, to cook the fruit. The tray of cans is
then raised, again automatically, onto a continuation of the moving
platform, which immerses them in a cold bath, in which they are kept for
a sufficient length of time to cool them. The cans are then sent to the
labeling room, where they receive their various brands, according to
grade and to the customers for whom they are intended.
All machinery is geared at a low rate of speed; the only process which
holds any menace is the peeling and coring machine, which must have the
careful attention of the operator to keep his fingers from the knives.
The cores, which formerly were thrown out with the waste, are now also
sliced into inch lengths, cooked, canned and sold to confectioners, who
coat them with chocolate and sell them as pineapple candies. As these
cores have about as much taste as juicy wood, it is at least a question
how much of pineapple the ultimate consumer is favored with.
The women workers in the canneries are divided into four classes:
trimmers, packers, labelers and miscellaneous, the latter doing duty at
the slicing machine, the pulp troughs and in packing the cores.
The new workers are usually started at trimming and at packing cores,
the youngest ones performing the latter work or tending the slicing
machines. All of this work is done in a sitting position in one of the
canneries; but the other two establishments have no seats for any of
their employes.
At the packing table, however, the workers stand shoulder to shoulder,
sometimes in the height of the season as closely packed as they can
work: ordinarily, however, there is ample room for each individual. At
one cannery there are seats back of the packers, but they are so
arranged that it is impossible to do more than lean back against them
for a moment or two, and even this throws an additional strain on the
workers’ feet, which it is necessary to brace against the floor or the
framework of the fruit table.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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