Working Conditions In Hawaii During The 1800s

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During the 1800s, in Hawaii, planters needed more workers to make sugar booming by importing foreign workers. Plantation life in Hawaii in the 1800s was difficult. From 1852 to 1946, the sugar plantations lured 385,000 contract laborers to Hawai'i. Living conditions were harsh, working conditions were rough, and racial differences were unfair. Living conditions were harsh because they lived in crowded, unsanitary work camps. Source 1 included that their new homes were on parched fields with little shade, surrounded by acres and acres of sugarcane that needed to be stripped and cut by hand. (1)Often, two couples would share a 10 foot square room that had a kitchen and a homemade stove. (1)They tried to recreate the village life they left, making small shrines in their homes and crude, homemade hot tubs called furo when men and women soaked after a day in the fields. According to source 2, Chinese lived in grass houses or unpainted wooden buildings with dirt floors. Sometimes as many as 40 men were put into one room. (1)They slept on wooden boards about 2 feet wide and about 3 feet from the floor. …show more content…

(1)The work was tedious beyond measure, and painful.(1) Weed-clearing crew worked all day bent over. (1)Workers who stripped the cane of its sharp-edged leaves went home each afternoon with cuts and blisters on their hands.(1) When it was time to cut the ripened, cane they labored amid clouds of dust that made it difficult to breathe. (1)They also had to deal with wasps that infested the fields. Women worked in the fields, but also did house cleaning and laundry. In source 1 it stated that “Children would attend and often worked 6 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. shifts that their parents

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