Why Is It Hard To Work In Hawaii In The 1800s

Nowadays, people need to work 20 minutes or less to earn three dollars. When immigrants were working on plantations, they had to work an entire month to earn three dollars. Since there were not many Hawaiians to work on sugar plantations, owners had to bring in immigrants to work instead. From 1852 to 1946, about 385,000 immigrants were brought to Hawaii as laborers (1). Plantation life in Hawaii in the 1800s was not easy because of many reasons.The three main reasons are living conditions were bad, working conditions were harsh, and racial segregation made work unfair.

Living conditions were bad. The workers lived in crowded and dirty work camps (1). The places that workers lived in were grass or unpainted wooden buildings (2). Sometimes, up to 40 men were crammed into one room (2). The workers didn’t have beds, instead, they slept on wooden boards approximately 2 feet wide and 3 feet above the floor. The new homes were built on the field surrounded by sugarcane with little or no shade (1). Furthermore, multiple families shared the same house (1).

Working in the sugar fields was miserable. They worked all day in the sun doing backbreaking work (1). Each morning the lunas or bosses took them to the fields to work (2). The workers cut sugarcane and put it into ox drawn carts all day long in the sun (2). If they slowed down, or stopped working they were frequently whipped by the lunas (2). Most workers went home each day with cuts and blisters on their hands (1). This is because the sugarcane leaves were sharp, and the workers cut sugarcane with their bare hands (2). In addition, they had to work in wasp infested areas where they would get stung often