If two girls were to occupy a furnished room and have their meals in restaurant the minimum weekly rate for each would be:
| Rent of Room | $1.00 |
| Food | 2.50 |
| $3.50 |
The cheapest rate at which I could find boarding accommodations for two girls in a room was $10.00, for a close, hot room in a house which did not seem at all desirable from any point of view.
Altogether the best plan which presents itself for providing accommodations is a rooming house making provision for two girls in a room, and having a cafeteria dining room. I should not advise making this a philanthropic venture. It should be not only absolutely self-sustaining, but should be conducted with a view to its making a return of at least 3% on money invested. This is the return made by the Mills Hotels in New York. Emphasis should be laid first on developing enterprises by which self-supporting girls may earn an adequate living, and, secondly, on obtaining a living wage for those engaged in occupations already established, rather than on providing them with a living place at philanthropic rates.
Before a girl is encouraged to leave her family and live in any other home it would be well to give a thorough consideration to her home problem and determine whether surroundings which at first may seem undesirable cannot in some way be changed so that family ties need not be broken. Family responsibility needs to be strengthened in every way possible among the natives, and if Hawaiian women who have had educational advantages would undertake the home improvement work which has had such beneficial results in the Southern States, much might be accomplished in raising standards of sanitation as well as morals. Whole families still occupy one room for sleeping purposes, and matters of this kind can only be remedied by constant personal effort. Congresses of physicians and other bodies assembled to discuss questions of sex morality all agree that little can be accomplished so long as habits of decent privacy are not inculcated.
HOURS
The Territory of Hawaii has as yet no labor laws, and therefore the hours during which men, women and children work are governed entirely by the will of employers, the workers’ own wishes or economic necessities, and in the case of children by the act providing that they shall attend school during ten months in the year until they are fifteen, when they may be released to go to work.
Employment in the canneries is by the hour, each employe being given a time card which is punched on coming to work in the morning, on resuming work at noon, and on leaving at night.
While the cannery season is short, it is also exacting. In addition to a regular eleven-hour day for four months in the year, a maximum of sixty hours overtime night work and thirty hours of Sunday work was reported by one cannery. Two others report less amounts. One employer said he worked his employes all they would stand for. Weekly pay envelopes show from seventy to eighty hours of work per week, in some cases running as high as eighty-four hours. In California, where the season extended over fourteen weeks, averaging sixty-three hours each, two cannery officials, each in a different cannery, are reported by the investigator of the Department of Commerce and Labor as volunteering the opinion that “cannery work was so much of a strain that workers were unfit to do other work when the cannery season was over.”[[7]]
[7]. Bulletin of the Bureau of Labor No. 96. p. 403.