Читать книгу The Industrial Condition of Women and Girls in Honolulu: A Social Study онлайн

12 страница из 23

Or, one meets a Japanese man, smiling with affectionate fatuity at the infant he carries in his arms; his own kimonoed and sandalled person topped with a regulation Panama hat. Or again, one attends a suffrage meeting with the audience made up of Hawaiian, Chinese and women of other nationalities, and listens to the familiar appeals for equal pay for equal work; amendments to the property laws; reduction of infant mortality; more schools. And so on, until one is permeated with a fine glow of wonder at the universality of it all, the “getting together” which is the surest promise of world peace, however much one may from an aesthetic standpoint regret certain of the departures.

Then, too, the workrooms, public utilities, public amusements (and very generally acquaintances and friendships) untrammeled by racial boundaries, cause one to wonder anew not alone at the ease with which Honolulu has dispensed with those boundaries but also at the fact that in this year of our Lord they still prevail in the caste-ridden communities of the mainland. One says prevail rather than exist advisedly, because race prejudice undoubtedly exists in Honolulu, and is openly expressed. Thus far, however, the women and girls of Honolulu are unhampered in their opportunities, and no man’s right to decent public courtesy is violated by race feeling. An Hawaiian incompetent is equally liable to be replaced with a Portuguese, a Chinese, a Japanese, or what not.