The laundries are all prosperous and growing, their managers say, most of the work coming from the steamers and transports constantly touching at Honolulu.
No previous training is required or wished, each laundry having its own way of doing its work and preferring to teach its own employes. There should be employment for from twenty-five to thirty girls in this work within the next year; but a ten-hour day rigid law and better wages are needed here.
THE CANNERIES
The Fourth Report of the Department of Commerce and Labor on Hawaii (Bulletin No. 94, May, 1911) sums up the possibilities of industry in the islands as a whole as follows—(1) page 674:
“The Territory possesses no mineral or fuel deposits, and this, together with the remoteness from markets, prevents diversified industries. A small amount of subsistence farming, followed principally by natives and orientals, and the production of staple export crops, like sugar, have hitherto been the principal occupations of the people.”
To this should also be added the product of the pineapple canneries, which, strangely enough, is omitted entirely from the report, although increasing in value and importance by leaps and bounds. This omission may perhaps be accounted for by the fact that the bulletin issued in May was compiled before the canning season commenced, which is not usually until June 1st, lasting this year until October 5th. In the past ten years the value of the pineapple exports increased from $3,948 to $1,229,647, almost 400%,[[4]] and the growth of this year’s business over last may be gauged from the fact that while one establishment employed a maximum of 215 women and girls last year, this year they report 450 employed during their heaviest time.
[4]. Bulletin of the Thirteenth Census of the United States, 1910; page 11.
Then, too, while last year 60% of the entire “pack” was reported as being taken care of in three weeks, this year there were only six or seven half-day shut downs during the four months of the season.
The manufacturers’ problem in Honolulu is uncomplicated by the variety of processes and products of the mainland cannery. The only product with which they have to deal is the pineapple, as against spinach, berries of all varieties, cherries, peas, wax beans, tomatoes, pears, peaches, apples, beets and finally oysters in Maryland; asparagus, strawberries, peas, gooseberries, cherries, currants, beans, blackberries, apricots, greengages, plums, peaches, pears, tomatoes, grapes and quinces in California; while Pittsburgh, Pa., cans berries, fruits, beans, corn, peas and tomatoes, as well as pickles and molasses.
After the overripe fruit is eliminated there is little or no waste in canning pineapple. As the boxes are taken from the freight cars into the factory, the “pines,” as they are usually termed, are stripped of their green ends by the trimmers, and these ends are planted for the rattoon crop. The pineapple yields two crops, requiring, like sugar, eighteen months to mature the first crop, the second, or rattoon, crop being ready for harvest in twelve months. Sometimes the trimming is done before the fruit is shipped from the plantations, in which case it is ready when received at the cannery for the coring and peeling machine. This machine is operated by men, and calls for considerable sureness of eye to secure the largest number of perfect pineapples for slicing. If the fruit is at all soft, however, it is split into two and sometimes three parts in this process, and is then used for grated pineapple, which is also made of the slices too imperfect for canning, the odds and ends from the slicing machine, and the fruit which still adheres to the peeling. These are accumulated in tubs, taken to the screening machine, which reduces it to the consistency of the grated pineapple, used principally at soda fountains. The grated pulp is received in a wooden vat running the length of the screen, and is conducted automatically from this vat into tubs. From these tubs the pulp is poured in bulk into cooking vats, where it is mixed with the sweetening syrup. From the cooking vats it is automatically fed into large cans, gallon or half-gallon, these cans in turn being automatically sealed and put into a cooling bath, after which they are sent to the labeling room.