China at the Wash-Tub

Sun (Auckland), Volume 1, Issue 82, 28 June 1927, Page 9

China at the Wash-Tub

Auckland Has Fifty-Four Chinese Laundries FIFTY-FOUR Chinese laundries dotted about Auckland streets contend for trade with 12 European competitors. Some citizens take an interest in the trend of the laundrybusiness and firmly believe that there is a principle at stake. But even a greater number are quite apathetic and either deny or ignore any question of principle involved. In whose favour is the tide of business going?. . There seems to be a “use-more-linen” campaign for both factions of the laundry trade prosper and neither seems to lose ground.

TT seems to bh a popular misconception that the great increase in the bag-wash business has taken trade from the Chinese shops. But that is not noticeably the case. Ask any Chinese laundryman and he will reply in his celestially bored style, “Nlot velly mluch,” which, interpreted, means something like “Go on with your nonsense.”

agement of a wife will not break it. Mrs. Blank sends the household wash to a European laundry, but Mr. Blank still passes his bundle of collars to his Chinese laundryman. It seems largely a question of old-established habit. The Chinese faction which it is estimated furnishes employment for upward of 75 workers is able to avoid the operation of the laundry workers' award through representations of partnership and family relationship which, in the nature of the case, can be neither proved nor disproved. Not being subject to an award they can keep their shops open till all hours and pay such wages as may be agreed upon. European laundries have to pay wages ranging from 22s for the youngest beginner and averaging about £2 2s 6d a week among the female employees. They have! to conform to all sorts of regulations and pay a substantial overtime rate. Under such conditions Hop Lung can undercut rates in certain lines and gain an advantage at the expense of the standards of living of European laundry workers. The laundries are licensed every year by the Labour Department and are inspected regularly by the City Council sanitary They are covered by the general nuisances by-law and also by the by-law controlling laundries. One fact seems to be indicated. The home wash-tub is fast passing into disuse. That day of back-breaking drudgery, the housewife’s washing day, has no claim to .have its passing deplored. In these days, for a small sum, the labour of the wash-tub is made factory labour —which is as it should be.

Of course an exact statement is almost impossible. White collars, once the exclusive domain of Hop Lung, the collar specialist and his mysterious helpers, are finding their way into the European laundries in greater and greater numbers. And what is going there, even allowing for ’population increases, is some loss to the Chinese. Of the Chinese laundries several have closed down in recent times, but whether that is due to stress of competition or to the growth of a combine in the Chinese side of the trade and the resultant closing of less-profitable shops is hard to discover. One of the largest businesses in the Chinese side of the trade owns about eight shops, half of which are only depots. An interesting calculation by a trade expert, working on the basis of population figures of males of collarwearing age using on an average of three collars a week, goes to show that the Chinese collar experts wash and iron at least 64,000 collars a week. That, however, is the undoubted mainstay of their trade. The homeless male, from force of habit, bundles his collars together and passes them in at the handiest of the 54 Chinese laundries. In return he receives a mysterious ticket and a laconic “Tluesday” or “Fliday.” And so fixed is his habit that even the household man-