Shirts, collars and cuffs are ironed on machines driven by gas, steam or electricity, the other pieces being ironed by hand, with electric or gas-heated irons. The ironing machines and boards are all placed at the windows on the mauka side of the room, so that the breeze blowing almost continuously from the hills may be taken advantage of.
In one laundry all the latest appliances in electric and steam-driven machines especially are in use; but the other two use gas and some electricity for their machines and irons. As the workrooms of these two laundries are open to the air on all four sides, however, the fumes do not accumulate, though they are in evidence to a slight degree near the machines when they are in operation.
Finally such pieces as require mending or darning go to a woman—usually an elderly person—who is regularly employed for this purpose, and who receives $4.50 a week in all the laundries.
The workers are of all ages, conditions and races.
The visits were made at the time of year when the laundries were least busy, and the race proportion among the women workers was as follows:—
| Portuguese | 90 |
| Hawaiians | 25 |
| Filipinos | 10 |
| Chinese | 2 |
| Porto Rican | 1 |
| Japanese | 1 |
| 129 |
The one Japanese had been adopted when a baby by a white family, and had been “raised white.” No Japanese are employed in any of the laundries, because of the fear of cut prices if processes are learned; but, on the other hand, there are innumerable Chinese and Japanese laundries throughout the city, the Bureau of Licenses having a record of 232 which are being operated without the license showing inspection by the Board of Health, required from the other laundries. Most of these are said to be conducted by Japanese women, who collect laundry from individual customers, hiring other Japanese women to do the work. But although there is a record of their existence, numerous trips through the tenement blocks failed to disclose any of them in operation.
Laundry managers say they find efficient workers among all nationalities, and that the grade of help is slowly improving. One manager says there is a great deal of jealousy between the different races on the score of advancement.
It was difficult to find any prevailing characteristics among the workers. Several worked because their husbands earned insufficient salaries to provide a “good home.” Three worked because they said it improved their health! The majority of Portuguese, however, either said they were helping to buy homes, or were members of large families, in eight instances having no support from their father, either through illness or death. The Filipinos and Porto Ricans spoke no English and it was impossible to talk with them. One Portuguese lady thought I was collecting for a church and immediately took out her pocket-book, searching through many petticoats to find it.
Here, as in the canneries, there was general good spirit among the employes, even the girls shaking out the sheets and table-cloths for the mangles—the most tiring work of all—doing it with much chattering and gossip. It must be because so much of the work is done in the fresh air that one sees little of the strained, tired expression of the mainland industrial worker. Several of the women stated that they had varicose ulcers on their legs, but none of these had been working in the laundry for a sufficiently long period to make this work the cause of the trouble.