Only the tenements, the best of which afford no decent privacy to families, are open to the man with a family who earns $1.00 or even $1.50 a day, if he is the sole wage-earner.
Your Oriental population is demonstrating its wish for better standards of living by the avidity with which it is building itself homes and sending its children to school.
Its morals will no doubt improve when, as a group of Chinese young people said to a Mission class leader, they “have a better example set them by representative white citizens.”
I believe that a Commission appointed by the Governor to look into wage conditions in Hawaii, and their relation to the cost of living, would clarify the whole Hawaiian labor situation, both at home and abroad.
Such a commission for the study of the wages of women and minors, was created in Massachusetts in 1911, as follows:
“Resolved, That the Governor, with the advice and consent of the Council, shall appoint a Commission of five persons, citizens of the Commonwealth, of whom at least one shall be a woman, one shall be a representative of labor, and one shall be a representative of employers, to study the matter of wages.”
Its report recommended an Act not only establishing a Minimum Wage Board, but also providing for the determination of minimum wages for women and minors.
Sections 3 and 4 of this Act provide:
“Section 3. It shall be the duty of the commission to inquire into the wages paid to the female employes in any occupation in the Commonwealth if the commission has reason to believe that the wages paid to a substantial number of such employes are inadequate to supply the necessary cost of living and to maintain the worker in health.
“Section 4. If after such investigation the commission is of the opinion that in the occupation in question the wages paid to a substantial number of female employes are inadequate to supply the necessary cost of living and to maintain the worker in health, the commission shall establish a wage board, consisting of not less than six representatives of employers in the occupation in question and of an equal number of representatives of the female employes in said occupation and of one or more disinterested persons appointed by the commission to represent the public, but the representatives of the public shall not exceed one-half of the number of representatives of either of the other parties. The commission shall designate the chairman from among the representatives of the public, and shall make rules and regulations governing the selection of members and the modes of procedure of the boards, and shall exercise exclusive jurisdiction over all questions arising with reference to the validity of the procedure and of the determination of the boards. The members of wage boards shall be compensated at the same rate as jurors; they shall be allowed the performance of their duties, these payments to be made from the appropriation for the expenses of the commission.”