COFFEE SORTING AND PACKING
Coffee sorting and packing employs between 60 and 70 women workers, the former occupation lasting from October to June, and the latter all the year round.
A number of the cannery employes find work here after the close of the pineapple canning season.
The work is sorting coffee beans of two grades, the better grade paying forty cents, the poorer grade fifty cents a hundred pounds.
Some of the experienced workers earn as high as $7.00 a week, but the majority of credits on the time book are between $2.50 and $4.50 a week.
The hours are from 7:30 a.m. to 5 p.m., and the workroom is in a light, airy, first-story room. Both the sorting and packing operations are carried on seated, the workers being arranged in groups of two or three.
Here, as in the canneries, the majority of workers are Hawaiian, with Japanese and Portuguese second and third in number. There are also Porto Ricans and Filipinos, but the highest wages are earned by the Japanese.
The Hawaiian foreman is a great favorite, and he knows the intimate personal history of all the workers—the Japanese girl who wishes to learn English; the Hawaiian woman who was closely related to the victim of the last white slave trial; the stout, but asthmatic and idle husband of one of the women, who “always shows up on pay day.”
Coffee packing pays $3.00 to $5.00 a week, according to length of service, the latter amount being paid after three years. I asked the foreman if anyone was earning $5.00 now, and he said: “No, not since my daughter left to be married.”
Few of the employes understand or speak any English, and it was therefore not possible to converse with them.