THE GUYS AND GALS IN THE OFFICE…SO YOU WANNA GET PAID?! Old Plantation Days, August 2011

There was a guy I got to know during plantation times at Mauna Kea Sugar Company, he was Chinese, and everyone called him “Johnny”.  I never knew if it was from a derivation of Jun, Jan, Jen, or Jo.  Wish I knew more now.

There was a very prophetic statement made by Johnny that has been ingrained in me every since I heard him say this…I hope many of you will read this, stand back a little, and think a bit about the depth of what he said:  “Mr. Cross, I love America, I love this country, I love this country so much you may not ever know.  When I came here I had maybe $17.00 dollars in my pocket.  I had nothing when I started working here …(a dramatic pause in his speech)… I am so rich now!!   Some of my friends complain about their wages, they complain about their taxes taken from their salaries.  But,,, me,,, I want to pay MORE taxes!!”   I responded naievly, “Johnny why would you ever want to pay more in taxes?”  He said “Because if I pay more to the government in taxes that MEANS I AM MAKING MORE MONEY!!”

Holy Mackeral, did that all kind of put me into place.

We should be happy to pay our taxes, we should be happy to see our government is managed, we should be happy to see our roads are paved, we should be happy to see our hospitals and schools are staffed and furnished, we should be happy to see the freedoms we enjoy today are being  paid by out of wages earned on the job.

O.K. That’s enough on that, except to  say we really,really do live in the most special place in the most special State, in the most special Country on this Planet called Earth.

This months article is about the guys and gals in the office, those who calculated all the hours, figured in all the FICA’s , HMSA’s, Housing, and other excises.  Yeah, they were guys that took the dollars from the payroll, but they were the ones who made the government happy, THE ACCOUNTANTS.

When I first started in the sugar cane industry I had the (unfortunate) priveldge to learn how to use a Frieden Calculator.  Now, only a few of you out there knows this name and mayl connect fully, but let’s try to describe what is was like to use a calculator before the age of microprocessors and silicon chips.  In this months article you will see several Friedens placed upon the desks of the clerks.  These machines were a true dinosaur of calculators, they were electric, yet driven my spokes and wheels and internal abacus devices of possible spiritual nature.  You entered your numerator…CHUCK.CHUCK.CHUNK. into the machine, then you pressed the key you wanted to use on them, (plus , minus, times, divide), CHUCK.  After you pressed this action key the device would go into a loud mechanical consumation of the numbers, the top of the machine would shift out to the right all on it’s own,(SHUCCKA<SCHUCKKA<SCHUUCKA, CHUNK!),  and then the  number keys would pop back out into place for the entry of the enumerators.  Again you would enter the enumeroator numbers, (CHUCK.CHUCK.) then….all hell would break loose as you pulled the one arm bandit “CALCULATE” arm to the right.  The whole machine Shcuucka’d, clanckeled, rattled, and chincked itself back towards the left until in stopped with the mechanical numbers that showed in the little window as being your end product number.  Yikes, I was thinking mathematics completely differently about this time.  Fortunately today I carry a calculator in my shirt pocket that is more powerful than an 80 pound Frieden!!

In one of our photos for this months article is a scene from the accountants room at Hilo Sugar Company’s office in Wainaku.  These guys and gals calculated all the pay for the workers, ordered supplies, paid the bills, accounted for sugar produced, and of course paid the taxes.  There is one individual in the middle foreground, do you recognize this young man??  One day he might even become a Senator!!  Yes, that’s Richard Henderson!  If you recognize anyone else please let us know.

The other photo shows one of the clerks sitting at a pay station booth handing out the pay envelopes to workers qued up.  Note the little brown envelope the clerk is handing over.  Before the days of writing checks these envelopes contained cash and coin in pay to the employee.  On the outside of the envelope was the employees hours, bonus, deductions for housing, medical, taxes, etc.etc.  Note again how there is a box with the Amercan Red Cross symbol on the side.  The employee would (at his discretion) remove cash from his pay envelope and put it in the Red Cross box.

A lot of cash being floated around at these pay stations….I wonder how many guys were outside of the place settling debts and planning the next gambling party!