The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1856-1888, 1871-09-09
Charity Begins Abroad.

The Gazette has taken a s'new departure
Not content with using the public money to OPP
pose private enterprise in the printing business,
the Ministry have now commenced to use their
press for the purpose OF gratuitous advertising of
goods, wares and merchandise. Not, however,
the goods or the business of our own merchants
or artisans, whose industries are a part of the
wealth of the country, and who help to support
the Government, but the goods and the business
of merchants and artisans living in foreign coun-
tries, who are thus gratuitously brought before
the public IN the editorial columns OF the minis
terial organ, in direct competition with the
former. The ruling genius" of His Majesty's
Cabinet, it would appear, having conceived the
brilliant idea that Honolulu mechanics were do
ing too well in making decent wages, and that
they should be snubbed and brought TO bow the
knee to Baal a little lower, procures and pub
fishes in the editorial columns of the Gazette,
o some Of the prices furnished us for Planters
Iron Work, at Sydney they having been pro-
cured through the agent of the Foreign Office,
the Hawaiian Consul at Sydney. We have now
discovered the purpose for which our copsuls are
appointed,-a point upon which some doubt has
existed. In consideration, doubtless, of the
neglected education of planters in need of iron
work, the prices have been kindly reduced from
pounds, shillings and pence, to dollars and cents.
Now the animus, the plain intention of this
editorial advertisement of foreign workmen, is TO
compel our own mechanics to work at starvation
wages, or to deprive them of employment and
drive them out of the country. And this is per-
fectly consistent with the previously declared
policy of the Gazette (ruled by the same genius
that rules the Cabinet1 in its discussion of the
subject of mechanics wages several months ago,
when it argued that workmen were paid too high
wages in these islands, the coolie standard be-
ing that desired, as the most manageable
Is any further evidence required to prove our
previous assertion that the policy of the " ruling
genius is to crush down and keep at the lowest
rate and in the most dependent condition the
labor of the country, while the capital is ele-
waited? Every act of the Government exercised
through the ruling genius" whenever it comes
in contact with the laboring and the moneyed in
terests, betrays the determined desire to debase
the one and exalt the other, from the manage
ment of a plantation, or the purchase Of castings
for machinery, down to the binding of a school
book. Intelligent well remunerated lahe,rino
~ ~ suOhd uOS IL mats id wanted IN
this country.
Let our mechanics, in view o. this showing.
ask themselves how they can consistently support
a newspaper which thus constantly and system
atically is endeaVoring to undermine their inter-
ests and lower their position in the social scale.
while it fattens at the public crib, replenisbed
with the taxes drawn from laborlng men.
Fortunately, however, the endeavor to sun
plant orr own workmen by the introduction of
iron work from abroad, while it displays the evil
intention, is not likely to arrive at its object.
We have not been = furnished with a list of
prices for Planters Iron Work at Honolulu.
but reason teaches us that there is generally a
good deal more to be paid than appears on a
bare list of prices, before a boiler is ready for
use. And further, that while the price of labor
in Sydney is as high as at present, nearly equal
to San Francisco rates, good work cannot be pro-
cured there at any advantage over our own
shops. But the paltry attempt to break US
down, is on record.