The Hawaiian gazette. [volume] (Honolulu [Oahu, Hawaii]) 1865-1918, 1876-08-30
Hurrah for Hawaii /!
lFrom ne AIta. Ang. ia

The news of the final passing of the bill to
carry the Hawaiian Treaty into effect will give
satisfaction on the Pacific Slope. II is the
general opinion here that it will do little in
jury to any industrial or commercial interests
in the United States, and that it will confer
decided benefits upon our Coast, as well as
upon the Hawaiian Islands. The Treaty-the
text of which appears in our Commercial
columns provides that brown and all other
"unrefned sugars, meaning thereby the grades
:" of sugar heretofore commonly imported from
" the Hawaiian Islands," and known in San
Francisco as Sandwich Islands sugar, syrup,
molasses, rice, fruits, nuts, vegetables, skins,
seeds, trees, talow, arrow-root, castOr-oil and
pull, the produce of the Islands, may be i'm
ported free of duty 1t will be observed that
no high grade sugar is admitted, and there
fore the business of the refneries in San
Francisco will, so far as we can see, not be
injured
The Hawaiian sugar crop is about half of
the consumption of the Pacific Slope, and has
for twenty years been increasing at the rate
of 500 tons annually, while the demand here
has Increased with equal or greater speed, and
we see no probability that the sugar exporta-
ton of the Island will ever be sufficient to
supply the San Francisco market. So long as
all the refining must be done here, and so long
as we must send to Manila and other places
for considerable share of our brown sugars,
and so long as the sugar production of the
Hawaiian Islands remains a mere trife, as
compared with the total consumption of the
United States, so long we must not expect any
material reduction of the market price of
sugar, or any notable damage to Louisiana or
California sugar mills or San Francisco re-
ineries.
A protest against the Treaty was sent from
Los Angeles, which feared that its market for
nuts would be damaged by the free importa-
tions but the Islands produce no almonds or
walnuts, and have no large surplus Of oranges,
lines, or lemons. The Hawaiians have pre-
ferred sugar plantations to orange orchards.
and importations of tropical fruits have come
mos fly not from the Hawaiian, but from the
Society Islands. As for the rice, arrow-root,
castor-oil, vegetables, hides, pulu, seeds and
trees, they are produced in small quantity for
expectation, and their admission free does not
amount to much for either party.
The islands have for years been suffering
under severe business depression. The de-
cline of the whaling business, the decrease Of
the population, the scarcity of labor, and the
additions to the American tariff have been felt
severely The natives have been dying off at
the rate of one per cent year, for the last
twenty years; in thirty years before 1853,
there was a decrease of II per cent in the
fifty years before 1921, more than so per cent.
Cook estimated the population at 100000 in
1873; and there were only $4,000 natives of
the Hawaiian race in 1872. There, as in many
other places, the dark-skinned races seem to
melt away before the influences that came with
civilization.
Honolulu, as a city, was built up by the
money acquired from American trade, espe-
cially with the whalers, which became numer-
Gus in the North Pacific, as early as 1870; and