The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1856-1888, 1882-01-07

visitors, the day being Her Majesty's birth
day.
WE issue, to-day, a six-page paper. We
will continue to issue q complete paper
whether of four, six, or eight pages-and
willy endeavor to avoid, in future, the issue
of any supplementary matter in detached
sheets or slips. 1t is our desire to promote
the interests of our advertising patrons, by
having their favors always we'll displayed
in the body of the paper.
The attacks which are being directed
against the fair name of this country are
becoming quite serious, not only on account
of the character of the charges brought
against us, but also, and chiefly, because of
the great number of sources from which
they come. The dissemination of libellous
statements about us is no longer confined
to a sensational journal in San Francisco.
Other papers have taken up the attack,
copying mistatements and adding their own
comments, more or less severe, and all very
injurious to the interests of this Kingdom.
The cry has gone beyond the limits of the
United States; the libels on Hawaiinei have
been copied into foreign journals in all parts
of the world, and our best friends are begin
ming to be sin doubt as to what they should
believe about us.
Portugal, the chief hope of our present
authorities in the matter of immigration,
has taken alarm at the ~''scandalous reports''
which lave been so freely circulated. How
far the Chinese authorities have also been
influenced by them in their recent prohibit
ton of emigration to Honolulu it is i'm
noSSibIa fO saw Evan in lands with which
we lave but few relations these injurious
tales and Iibellous insinuations have been
scattered far and wide
We have before us a New Zealand paper
which prints the following language as the
report, concerning our affairs, of it's San
Francisco correspondent. Under the sensa-
tional heading of Slavery in Honolulu"
and referring to some former letter in
which stories to our disadvantage have been
related, this writer says:-
81 have given you a slight idea of the man.
ner in which laborers are being treated on the
territory belonging to King Kalakaua, and further
developments tend to show that a frightful con-
dition of affairs is the result of investigation.
We have now n couple of gentlemen, recently
arrived from the land of bondage, who give
heart-rendering accounts of the rigorous slavery
III VIII JIG 90 ON ASR- - "PECpho
that the owners of the sugar plantations on the
Hawaiian Islands send agents to the South Sea
Islands and other places 20 gatl-er ap workmen.
The contract entered into by these people and
their oppressors is for five years, being paid at
the rate of five dollars, or 81 per month. OF
course these people have no money, therefore
they have their passage awarded to them on
credit. On arrival at the slave ~depot-where
fIa- ora 1riraF1 iufn a lilo Chaan- tho
owners pay the Government the passage money
and also the school. tax, road tax, hospital tax,
and all other taxes which any person entering
the Sandwich Islands is bound to pay, and then
the white slaves are started to their work. Their
dwellings are rude structures, one story high,
fifty feet long, by twelve feet. These palaces
are sub-divided into five rooms, in size ten feet
by twelve feet. Single men are thrust into
these rooms till they are full. If a family arrive,
they too, are generously awarded one room,
never mind whether the children are grown up
or not, they all sleep together, like pigs in a pen.
These poor creatures work day in and day out,
rain or sunshine, and if it rains too hard-as it
usually does-they rest, and for that rest SO
much wage is deducted. OF course it takes every
dollar of the five dollars per month to pay up
the passage and other necessary" expenses
incurred DIV the tenUer-letlII6u owners lOr Inelr
new slaves, therefore it is seldom they get a dol
lar for themselves. When sick the wretched
creatures are sent to the hospital-a cell six feet
by four feet-where they lie until better or die,
if God in mercy so wills it. The food is so
abominable that they eat it with difficulty, and
fog all this there is no redress. Each plantation
is managed by an overseer, who has in turn under
him other subs, and it is computed that servitude
on the Hawaiian Islands is conducted on just as
pleasant a system as ever 1t was in the negro
populated South of this continent. In these is
lands. where God has planted a paradise, where
fruit and flowers grow in rich prOfusion, our
white brethren languish and pine in the terrible
woke of serfdom. Clad in the meanest garments
and with shoeless feet, they toll increasingly be-
meath the scorching rays of a tropical sun or
under the wild downpour of a tropical rain,
which is even worse, and here there is no appeal
to the law. When once these poor deceived
creatures plant their feet upon the soil they are
as surely doomed to five years slavery as were
ever their darker brethren in the Southern States
of the grand continent of America. This con-
tract system is also tending frightfully to the
degradation of the women.
\ contemporary, urging a remedy for this
condition of things, says that ga Commits
sion of independent men" should be formed
who should investigate the truth of things
and make it known. We may, however,
well ask, where are such men to be found ?
Our planters, our merchants, our commits
sion agents must be excluded from the field
of selection. They are all interested in the
labor system which is attacked and vilitied.
We have no men in this country who are
both independent and uninterested. But
We have a Government, we nave Ministers