The Daily bulletin. [volume] (Honolulu [Hawaii]) 1882-1895, 1885-11-13
DISTURBING ELEMENTS,


hc coast. The strike of cigar makers
in San Francisco, it is feared, is
but the premonitory rumbling of
sort of social earthquake. The ele-
ments of revolutionary outburst
seem to be gathering force and
strength. The city of San Fran
cisco witnessed demonstration on
the part of the strikers on the Satur-
day night previous to the leaving of
last steamer. While the cigar
makers were the actual participants,
it was evident that the mechanics
of other trades were in sympathy
with the movement. And if the
strength of the cigar makers is found
insufficient to accomplish the pur-
poses of that body, other trades
will, in all probability, make common
cause with them. The authorities
are evidently afraid of an outbreak
of violence, as it is asserted on good
authority that hundred men are
undergoing rifle drill to be ready to
reinforc the police in case of cmer-
gency. The objective point of the
agitation is to get rid of Chinese
labor, which there, as here, under
bids the labor of all other nationali-
ties. The Chinese labor question is
fruitful of agitation everywhere.
No doubt the laboring classes of the
Pacific coast who are not Mongolians,
have serious grievances in the flood
of Chinese labor thrown against
them by way of competition for the
returns justly due to civilized work
men. And Chinese or no Chinese,
there is much wrong to be righted
in the matter of remuneration for
labor, and that in the Hawaiian
Islands as well as on the continent
of America. But although the
employer has his full share of re-
sponsibility to account for in the
disturbances continually arising be-
tween capital and labor, there is
unquestionably great mistake
among workmen themselves about
the real cause of their many alleged
grievances. That able bodied labor
ers and skilled mechanics are not
generally in better circumstances
than they are, is due, in too many
instances, not so much to their
meagre incomes as to their IMPROVE
dent expenditures. The close COM
petition, and low prices prevailing
in every branch of industry yield
ing the comforts and conveniences
of high and fast living, by appar-
emily placing within the reach of
every man the necessary materials
and fixings for maintaining an es-
tablishment which, fifty years ago,
would have been considered princely
in its grandeur, create and multiply
expenditures which, severally, seem
light, but collectively constitute
burdens too heavy for the limited
breadth of the shoulders compelled
by the laws of fashion to bear them.
With very rare exceptions, in this
advanced age of cheap finery and
endless sources of amusement, per-
sons with limited incomes spend SO
cents of every dollar they earn;
nor is it an uncommon state of af-
fairs among even the best paid
mechanics to exhaust their wages
in advance of their pay-days. Men
who are thus inefficient as finance
ministers of their own revenues, are
invariably and inevitably in a con-
dition of dependence and at the
mercy of capitalists, and capitalists
who are too scrupulously conscien-
tious to take advantage of these
circumstances belong rather to the
millennium period than to the nine
teenth century. The demand of
the cigar makers of the golden city
that the cheap working Cinnamon
be dismissed, may, under the cir
cumstances, be an exception to the
universally recognized rule that it is
the undoubted right of the employer
to hire whom he pleases to do his
work, but it is no less true that
such a demand is based on wrong
,r;po;plaa II "a tho unioD and uOn-