The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1909-05-12

lily with three or four children can
not help their husbands increase the
income of the family. Their time is
entirely taken up for the care of the
house and the children Should the
husband become sick, or otherwise dis
abled and laid up for a day or any
number of days, the family income is
diminished proportionally, bringing di-
rect distress upon the family-the
helpless wife and children. Not only
that, the small savings, if there We're
any, will all be absorbed in the pay
ment of the doctors bill, and if the
sickness or accident should continue
for any length of time, the bills of
doctor and merchants will pile up,
which it is impossible to pay off for
a year or two.
This statement alone, we beg re-
spectfully to submit, is sufficient to
move your Christian generosity, and
! recognize the justice and reasonable
ness of our request, and assist us by
| granting this our request.
90 For further eason we beg
leave to state that our efficiency as
| laborer is no inferior to laborer of
other nationalities who are now being
paid higher wages than ourselves To
take the example of ordinary field
| hands, the laborers of other rationale
ties are being paid twenty-five dollars
and a half (s22.5O) per month: and,
besides, they are given a cottage for
each married couple and one acre of
good land. 1t is elementary in eco
Monies that wages are regulated by
efficiency of laborers working under
identical or substantial similar condi-
| tons If so, we are entitled to twenty
two dollars and a half and cottage
and one acre of good land, or the
| value thereof. We have the pleasure
to presume that you will recognize our
efficiency and do justice to our claim
of equality of efficiency.
Not only from the economic view
point, the moral sense will compel you
to give as equality of wages and equal.
ity of treatment. is it not matter of
simple justice and moral duty to give
same wages and same treatment to
laborers of equal efficiency, irrespective
of race, color, creed, nationality or pre-
vious condition of servitude2 1t il
respectfully submitted that it is most
unjust to discriminate one from the
other and pay one laborer twenty-five
dollars and half and give a cottage
and land besides, and pay another only
; eighteen dollars and nothing else.
We respectfully submit that boil
by the economic and moral principles
we are fully entitled to an increase o.
wages. For further reasons and sta
tistical basis of our claim we beg tt
refer you to copy of demand fo
. higher wages presented to Mr.. W. O
Smith, secretary of the Planters Asso
citation. by the Higher Wages Assoeia
ton, copy of which, we trust, is al
l ready in your hand.
!. q As for our request for the doubl
: pay for Sundays work, we beg to stat
simply that this is only proper. Oh
the mainland this is the common usage
q and even here the workers on tn
4 wharves and docks are being pai,
/, double on Sundays. Sunday is the da,
7 particularly set apart by the Divine in
$ junction for the rest of the BODY an,
. soul, and this rest of one day in a wee
: is essential for recuperation for tn
e laborers in the cane field ANY one VIII
: should forego this welcome chance o