Plantation Workers In The Late 1800's

Imagine a scrawny, scarred plantation worker living in the 1800’s out in Hawaii, hunched over all day long with fresh blood dripping down his muddy hands. Slapping at stinging wasps, and soothing scars all day, he struggles to live. This is just another day in the life of a Hawaiian immigrant worker, struggling through life. To keep it short- these plantation workers don’t have it easy. “What is a Hawaiian immigrant plantation worker?” many may ask. These Hawaiian immigrant plantation workers, in the 1800’s, were foreigners that immigrated to Hawaii looking to make money and start a better life working on the sugar plantations of Hawaii- the new chief of income out on the paradisaic islands. Due to a lack of plantation workers and a boom in
Imagine living with little personal space away from your family. This is how the laborers lived, with barracks that were very cramped with a similar ratio of a 10-foot square room for two couples (Source #1). Because of the lack of space, the laborers were forced to share a tiny space to fend for their families and use as a multipurpose room (Source #1). For example, as the Chinese immigrant laborers arrived, they were taken to their “plantation houses” where they lived in grass houses or unpainted wooden buildings with dirt floors (Source #2). Often times, forty men would be crammed into one room (Source #2). They slept on wooden boards about two feet wide and about three feet from the floor (Source #2). To add to all of the trouble, laborers resided in their barracks that were located right on the plantation that they worked in, causing them to have to put up with the scorching heat inside their packed barracks (Source #1). Aside from living in a cramped room, the barracks in which the laborers resided were very unsanitary and not very house-like (Source #1). As a result, the living conditions as an 1800’s Hawaiian immigrant plantation worker was very
Many of the Europeans were treated like royalty as compared to the Asians. Just look at this, for an example, Europeans were commonly the ones who owned the plantations. However, the worst of jobs for the laborers were given to the Asians. Amongst the Asians, there were still more examples of favoritism of race. Looking at the Japanese and Filipino workers, there were some obvious scenarios in which ethnic and racial favoritism played a crucial role in their pay. The pay of many different racial and ethnic groups varied no matter which job they worked, for example, Japanese cane cutters earned 99 cents a day, while the Filipino cane cutters earned 69 cents a day. There were other racial and ethnic discriminations that not only affected pay, but affected the kinds of jobs people were assigned. Although they are part of the Asian ethnicity, many Chinese immigrants worked on the field, and, unlike the other Asian ethnic groups, also got to work at the plantation stores, which, according to many, was one of the more pleasant parts of plantation life. Similar to some parts of the world today, racial and ethnic discriminations played a crucial role in how society worked in the plantation