In Hawaii the trouble is primarily due to the shortsighted greed of the sugar planters and of the great employers generally, who showed themselves incapable of thinking of the future of their children and anxious only to make fortunes from estates tilled by coolie labor. Accordingly, they imported, masses of Chinese laborers and, then masses of Japanese laborers. Throughout my term as President, I have so far as possible conducted our policy against this desire of the sugar planters, against the theory of turning Hawaii into an island of coolie-tilled plantations, and in favor of making it so far as possible the abode of small settlers. With this purpose, I have done everything I could to encourage the immigration of southern Europeans to the islands, and have endeavored so far as I could in the absence of legislation to restrict the entrance of Asiatic coolies. As regards the mainland, our policy should have three sides and should be shaped, not to meet the exigencies of this year or next but to meet what may occur for the next few decades.
Japan is poor and is therefore reluctant to go to war.
Moreover, Japan is vitally interested in China and on the Asiatic mainland and her wiser statesmen will, if possible, prevent her getting entangled in a war with us, because whatever its result it would hamper and possibly ruin Japan when she came to deal again with affairs in China. Disturbances like those going on at present are certain to occur unless the Japanese immigration, so far as it is an immigration for settlement, stops. For the last six months under our agreement with Japan it has been stopped to the extent that more Japanese have left the country than have come into it. Much of the necessary expense would be met by closing the useless Navy yards. All this is so obvious that it ought not to be necessary to dwell upon it.