The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1908-04-16
JAPANESE
EMIGRATION
Why the Laboring Glasses Are
Eager to Leave the
Country.

long for the visitor in Japan to IN
derstand why the people of the labor
ing classes are so anxious to emigrat
to some other country. Wages are S
low as to afford only the bare necessi
ties of existence. While the rate o
compensation is inadequate in all line
of endeavor, the lowest level is strucl
in the pay of the woman workers. Fo
the manufacture of toothpicks tn
wages are three cents for a ten-hou
day; for making paper bags and card
board boxes, four cents for eigh
hours; for folding paper in book bind
cries, five cents for eight hours; fol
sewing shirts and underwear, si1
cents; and for FASTING paper lanterns
seven cents a day. There are thou
sands of women in Japan working fol-
less than enough to keep the Ameri-
can factory girl in chewing gum.
The japanese government has is
sued table of average wages for
laborers, and out of list. of fifty dif-
ferent occupations the bricklayer leads
with wage of fifty cents a day. Shoe
makers and blacksmiths get forty
cents, while leather workers aud paint
ers average thirty-fve cents a day.
The wages for skilled labor in the man
ufactures does not vary from the
cheapness prevailing in other branches
of industry. A china decorator is paid
but thirty cents for ten hours work,
during which time he sits on his legs
in tailor-fashion and uses his eyes and
hands upon his delicate work. He is
an artist capable of executing the most
intricate patterns, yet the American
street urchin with a nimble pair of
legs and good lung power can earn
more in an hour selling papers.
The low scale of wages in Japan is
by no means confined to common work
men, The foreman of the electric light
plant in Yokohama, city of 100000
inhabitants, receives only forty five
cents a day for his skilled services. He
is an educated electrician, but his sal
airy is lower than that of an ordinary
American office boy. The station mas
ter in Yokohama, who has several hun
bred people under him, receives but
thirty dollars a month Of course, he
has family and must pay rent and
employ servants out of this small sal
airy. The engineers, conductors, train
men, station employees and others who
are under him, average about fifteen
dollars a month.
There are over 100000 men and
women school teachers in the elemen-
tary schools of Japan whose average
pay is only eight dollars month, and
it is said that the average salary of
the eight thousand government clerks
in Toxic is fifty cents a day. This is
quite a contrast to the fat jobs Amer |
lean politicians hand around among |
their friends. Policemen are furnish |
ed with uniforms and are paid thirty
cents day. 1t is needless to say that |
the clothes they wear while on duty |
are the most expensive and comfort |
able they have ever worn. Bookkeepers
and accountants for native firms are !
paid about forty cents a day, with /
room rent and board thrown in. Some
generous employers also furnish smek-
ing tobacco.
Things are, done in Japan in a way |
1uite different from that which Amer
leans consider economically necessary.
Take for example the course of con-
struction of new house in Toxic. The
excavation is accomplished by laborers
who receive fifteen cents for ten hours
work. They carry the dirt to the
street in baskets, then dump it into
carts, which another crowd of men pull
away with much noise and labor. This
process is so slow that the work proves
expensive in the end. Before the eX-
cavation is completed. the dirt taken
from it will be worth almost it's weight |
m gold, when compared to what it !
would cost to remove it in an Ameri-
can city.
The various kinds of workmen ar
rive before seven clock in the morn
ing, but they do not get to work
They build a little fire, and |
then gather around it to talk and |
thaw out. BY eight O'Clock the most
Of them are at work They all wear
blue cotton suits with characters upon
the coats to indicate their guild, as
we'll as the firm or individual for whom /
they are working. This is their winter
garb. In summer they wear nothing |
but a cloth around their loins, and a |
band about their foreheads to keep the |
sweat ITOin uON tutlT
The carpenters wages average forty |
cents a day. They use the crudest of
tools, not even having the claw-ham- |
mer which our workmen consider so
Then follow the usual
rule of this strange land,
pulling the plane and saw which an
American pushes. All the workmen
waste much time in the contemplation
of unmportant detail. They constant
ly waste their strength in misdirected
effort, loiter to talk and smoke, and
when two or more are working together
at any task they keep time by chant
ing a droning song. One of the rea-
sons that this labor is cheap is he
cause its productive power is 50 smell.
One popularity of a Japanese house
is that its dimensions are GO 2rnsd by
the size of the mats which are to 90
upon its floors. These mats are always
made in multiples of three aud the
floors are made to correspond to their
size. Japanese lumber is cut 10 con-
form to this arrangement and there is
no waste to it at all. The native car
penters are completely baffe1 when
they get hold of American lumber with