Since progressive thinkers agree that preventive measures make far more surely for social betterment than anything corrective which has yet been evolved, I have endeavored to gather together the measures which have been successfully placed in operation in other communities and to present to you for consideration such of them as fit your needs and conditions.
Three representative bodies engaged in social research: the Bureau of Municipal Research, the Russell Sage Foundation, and the Consumer’s League,—all of New York City—cover practically the entire field and are always at the service of those who wish information or advice.
More personal service is needed everywhere in Honolulu. The best program possible to formulate soon becomes useless anywhere if carried on by unthinking, unprogressive, however well-intentioned methods.
I wish to cordially thank the members of the Executive Committee and of the sub-committees of the Survey, and not the least the wage-earners of the community for the help and encouragement I have had. In spite of queries which briefness of time allotted to the study made it necessary at times to make directly of the latter, I have been received with the utmost good will and helpfulness by workers of all nationalities.
I am especially indebted to the books of Miss Josephine Goldmark, Fatigue and Efficiency; and of Miss Elizabeth Beardsley Butler, Women and the Trades, for valuable information and suggestion. No one interested in the welfare of wage-earners can fail to have his vision widened and clarified by these two pieces of work, prepared with infinite devotion and infinite care in the service of humanity both employing and employed.
FOREWORD
There is a world movement in uplift work for women. Along with the rest of the world Hawaii is awaking to this call. In all lines of endeavor there must be a working plan. But first must be facts “writ large” and plain. In view of this interest and the desire to do a vital work for the wage-earning girls and women of Honolulu, the Trustees of Kaiulani Home secured the services of a trained investigator, Miss Frances E. Blascoer of New York City, to make a study of industrial conditions among the working girls of Honolulu and to present a plan for the organization of a Vocational Bureau here in the islands.
With the coming of Miss Blascoer the vision grew; a social survey was attempted, a survey which should be the means of presenting to citizens and social workers the real state of industrial and housing conditions; the character of the amusements offered to our community; facts anent dependent children; facts concerning the devastation of the social evil.
Religious, moral, intellectual, professional and vocational education; community hygiene; sanitary regulations; the beautifying of Honolulu; all these demand the concerted action of women and men. And then, too, there is the “call of the children” that comes with such strength of appeal from the findings of the Juvenile Court. The dependent child must be considered. The crimes that imperil the virtue of unprotected little girls must not be hidden. The fact must be faced of the incursion of Hawaii by large numbers of unmarried men and the accompanying menace to young women. Unquestionably, the conditions under which girls and women work should be known by the public.
Churches, associations, clubs, individual philanthropists, should have accurate knowledge of social conditions; that pauperizing may be avoided and that the waste of duplication in charitable work may be avoided. Undoubtedly more light is needed for the conduct of benevolent enterprises, perhaps not more giving, but more “efficient giving.”