Perhaps the women employes in the small Chinese and Japanese shops have the longest hours continuously, as these shops open at seven o’clock in the morning and do not close until nine o’clock or later in the evening.
The workers in the laundries, who have a regular ten-hour day, perform overtime work until eight or nine o’clock at least twice a week, and during the winter season, when the tourists are most numerous, one laundry manager reported eighty-seven hours overtime in one month. Saturday is a half holiday unless there is a special rush of work.
Household servants, here as elsewhere, are among the least considered sufferers from the long day, and although Honolulu mistresses of households call to one’s attention the fact that no servants are on duty in the evening, that may be regarded rather as a mitigation of one of the greatest hardships borne by domestic servants, rather than as having a bearing on the general question of a normal working day.
Honolulu is an early riser, and servants come on duty at half-past six. Dinner is not over at the earliest until seven o’clock, which means that the work of the maid who waits on the table continues for at least twelve and one-half hours, and longer if she has any duties after dinner.
There are few women cooks, the domestic servants being almost exclusively housemaids, waitresses and nursemaids. Where several maids are employed, each of them has an hour or two of leisure through the day; but in the case of the cook-and-one-maid menage, which is by far the most common, Sunday afternoon, and occasionally,—but by no means universally,—an afternoon during the week is given. The long day is a potent factor in the servant problem; and yet the Japanese women, like their sisters in other communities, prefer to go to work at the machines in the little shops. I have talked with as many of them as could understand English, and none would consider going back to housework. On having their attention called to the fact that they were working just as long in the shops they smiled and nodded, saying: “Bimeby not work so long,” which may forecast a similar situation to that brought about by certain of the Chinese huis, who have, notably among the tailors, succeeded in securing an eleven-hour day. It is an undoubted fact that rather than become a household servant at a minimum wage of $4.00 a week and her food,—in many cases all her living expense,—the women work twelve and fourteen hours in the shop for from $2.00 to $5.00.
Clerks and stenographers have an eight-hour day. Shop girls are on duty from seven-forty-five until five o’clock, with an hour at noon and a Saturday half holiday three months in the year. One shop closes on Saturday at one o’clock four months in the year.
The shop girls have two weeks’ vacation with pay, and all the stores provide seats.
Stenographers also have two weeks’ vacation with pay, in a great many cases being allowed a three months’ vacation every three years.
Teachers are on duty from eight-forty-five in the morning until two-fifteen in the afternoon—almost an hour and a half less than the regulation time for this work. They have a somewhat longer vacation, too, than elsewhere.
In her consideration of hours of work, in “Women and the Trades,”[[8]] Miss Butler questions the length of the working day which may be considered “long.” “At present (even) ten hours as the limit of the working day is far from universal,” she says. “Should ten hours, however, be set as a permissive standard? Or should we seek rather to work out, on the basis of health, a lower maximum beyond which no employe may go, and below this maximum set others corresponding to the degree of strain in different industries?... Hours are ‘long,’ whether the day is eight hours or ten, if the work is continued so long that it causes ill health or interferes with the employes’ capacity for recreation.”