The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1901-06-15
END OF A LABOR UTOPIA.

where the general opinion of the coun-
try, expressed in newspapers and maya
zines, was that such a struggle was
not to be expected, and complete har-
mony had been established for all time.
/ The works are now closed, and $500
men and women are out of employment,
and the president and manager of the
company has left the place, intimating
| that as he is forced by the unions TO
close the works, he will not re open
them until the union men abandon in
reference.
/ The remarkable work Of j. II Patter-
son, the president, in Improving the
CONDITION of the laborers is familiar to
leveryone interested in the labor prob
llems 1t will always bear repetition,
because the conditions established were
due, not to any spirit of philanthrophy.
but to the broad and wise belief that
the employer got the best work out of
the employe, by placing him in the best
physical and moral plane that ingenuity
could contrive within rational limita-
lions.
OF all the 1900 people Who are by this
action thrown out of employment, proba-
bly, none at the present stage of the game
leeiS more regret lIldH tie oUU SlTtS i lie
surroundings which these girls have
had in their work is without doubt un-
paralleled anywhere else in the world
where women are employed. The desert
ed shops where they worked as they
stand today exactly as they were left
when the girls walked out after the shut
down, have an appearance so utterly at
variance with the popular idea of fac
tory, or. for that matter. of the actual
fact of factory surroundings, that the
contrast seems almost absurd. The long,
| light, airy rooms in which they work,
| with their waxlike cleanliness and their
dainty little touches of feminine decora-
ton here and there, suggest rather more
sort of combination of summer resort
and girls, boarding school than a place
where young women are engaged in the
serious occupation of earning a living.
If ever the struggle of life was done
up in cotton and downy cushions for the
strugglers, surely it is here. The very
hours of work themselves as contrasted
with those that prevail in most factor
les which are not even considered hard,
seem almost grotesque in their generos-
ity. Eight o'clock in the morning is the
hour when they must report. Twenty
minutes after o'clock in the afternoon
is the time when they quit. In the in
terval there is full hour for luncheon.
In addition to this there is q recess in
the morning of ten minutes and another
in the afternoon of the same interval.
The luncheon Is served In a bright,
very gayly decorated room at the top of
the building. 1t is fairly radiant, this
working girls refectory. Over in one
side there is a cosey alcoye with easy
chairs Over in another corner Is a
piano. In still another is a bookcase,
wit Yaar tahI xry;f =,
all the latest magazines. The ceiling is
hung from one end to the other with
clusters of artificial dowers-the same
which served as the Easter decoration of
one of New York's large mercantile con-
Germs, and were purchased and brought
here by Mr.. Patterson at no very light
expense considering that it was mere
whim to furnish something bright and
cheerful for the eyes of a factory girl to
rest upon during her MONDAY hour of
rest and re. reshment.
Not one of the girls in the factory has
to climb foot of stairway to reach this
cosey resort at the top of the building.
For ten minutes after the ringing of the
luncheon bell, the elevator runs exclu-
sively for their benefit to take them
from the place where they work to the
dining room. For the luncheon that is
served each girl pays cents. 1t costs
the company cents to put it upon the
table, for the work alone of cooking and
providing for 300 hungry factory girls is
no small item, to say nothing of the out
lay for the equipment of the kitchen
and the table furniture. Omelette, cream
ed cabbage, coffee-that is the reading
of the rather forlorn-looking bill of fare
for the last day which the girls work
ed, which hangs upon the wall.
If a1ropSt n ahCnrditU dali
ty boarding school dining room. all pro-
vided practically free of charge, for the
employees of heartless octopus. But yet
even the dining room is not quite so GU
riously in contrast with conventional
ideas of factory surroundings as the
dressing rooms, which open out from ev-
cry factory floor on which the girls are
employed. If these rooms suggest any
thing 1t is rather the affectfonate touch
of some fond mother. There seems to
be absolutely nothing omitted of all the
little feminine mysteries which should
go with such an apartment This great
business factory has even gone INTO the
subject of curling irons with breadth of
grasp and a minuteness of detail which
are bewildering. 1t provides not only a
round dozen of the most approved form
of curling irons, but it also provides an
elaborate device of its own in the way
OF a gas .Aeater with place Tor each and
every one of the twelve separate irons
to be he.u over flames. Combs and
brushes, towels of the snowiest-aIl these
the octopus provides for the young wom-
en- to make use of.
Connecting with each dressing room
there is a bathroom with porcelain tubs, |
and every little detail and comfort and
convenience that a bathroom should !
have. All this, of course. is as free as
the water which runs into the bathtub
itself. In addition to this, each girl is |
kept provided with fresh, clean apron |
which covers her street dress and abso- !
lutely protects her from the soil of her
work, and with the apron there also go
a pair of sleeves to cover the sleeves of t
her gown. These are laundered by the /
and furnished free of cost
to each girl. But even that is not all. .
There is the REST Room''-a dainty lit ,
tie sort of semi-hospital, where the girls
may go who feel tired and overdone, who
have a headache, or any of the little ills
which a man Is supposed never to have,
or, if he .oes have, never to mind, but
to go. on working just the same.
: Each of these rooms has five snowy
10