The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1856-1888, 1870-10-15

be much, the oxen would almost pay for it. There
are however smaller arrangements drawn by a
road engine, which might be suitable for single
plantations. The engine could do other work at
other times, and would be particularly useful in
drawing cane to the mill during the grinding
season.
But when we have introduced steam machine
ry on our plantations, wherever practicable and
profitable, what effect will it have on the labor
question? According to our view, every rlanta-
ton that makes use of the steam pillow and har-
row, and gets more land into cultivation will
require more hands than it did before. The
more steam We use the more men we shall want.
Whenever machinery is introduced into a suita-
bic location, there the population increases and
wages rise. Employers can afford to pay better
wages, and a more generally skilled and intelli-
gent laboring class is required. 1t would seem
that there is going to be some difficulty on these
islands in getting enough of a suitable class of
laborers, at the wages we have been accustomed
to pay. At something more, however, we can
get as many from China as we want. 1t may
be that We shall have to look this question
squarely in the face, and to make up our minds
to pay higher wages. If anything can save our
plantations under this increased tax, it will be
by steam machinery and by increasing the yield.
We may figure as we like, but it is palpable
that, other things being equal, the cost per pound
of sugar on a plantation growing four hundred
acres of cane and yielding six hundred tons of
sugar, would be greater than the cost per pound
of the sugar on a plantation growing six hum
dred acres cane and yielding nine hundred tons
sugar. Again, nominally higher wages does not
always mean really higher. That is to say, there
would probably be more than twenty per cent.
more work got out Of fifty Chinese who were
paid fifteen dollars per month each, over all, and
were satisfied, than out of fifty Chinese who cost
twelve dollars and a half per month each over
all and were dissatisfied. We knoO that on
some of the very best plantations there is a large
amount of Sinking and soldering going on
amongst both natives and Chinese, and there is
only one remedy, that is to pay them and treat
them, SO that the greatest loss they can suffer
would be to lose their situations.
We say then, that even if our plantations
should be obliged to pay a nominally higher rate
of wages that they could perhaps do better than
ever before, by introducing steam cultivating
machinery wherever practicable, by increasing
the area under cultivation and the yield, and by
getting a more adequate days work out of the
laborers. Referring to the general good effects
Of steam cultivation on farms, and on the labor
performed, the report of a committee on this
subject in England, in 1867, observes
Not only are the operations themselves better
done, quicker done, less extensively done, but all
kindred and collateral movements have had impaired
to them a speed and 'whirr' characteristic of
steam men acquire the habit of doing the days
work in the day, and of not leaving it for. the NOR
row. The days labor, too, on a steam Eim, repre-
sents more work, with less distress to the physical
power of the laborer, and better remuneration.
Steam is working a revolution, slightly manifested
as yet, so that we can speak only of tendencies in
farm practice, and in the character of the ruEaf~
population they are being trained for the>ege Of
machinery in agriculture