The Hawaiian gazette., 1886-02-02
The Reciprocity Treaty.


The Aifa California of January 10th contains
the following article upon the Reciprocity Treaty
and Hawaiian Trade which will be read with in
terest by both our planters and merchants It
says:
The Hawaiians are rich prize. They are the
meat and milk of the cocoauut while the Samoans
and the Carolines are the husk and she'll Our
Consul at Apia has protested, as was his duty,
diplomatic sense and to save a point in interna-
tonal law, his protest as powerless as if made
against the tides If feet of German iron clads
should anchor of Honolulu, Minister Merrill would
Just powerlessly protest against German absorp-
tion of that Kingdom. The Safhoans are 5000
miles away. The Hawaiian Islands are only a
week sail. They are the only shelter this coast
has at sea. Put them under European domina-
tion and we are without a coaling station, an
anchorage or a foothold for commerce between
California and Africa. We owe our influence up
on those islands now, not TO our army, nor navy,
nor diplomacy, nor politics, but to our CONNER
cial enterprise which urged the Reciprocity Treaty
which is its shelter. With q shortness of sight
which is phenomenal, the abrogation of that treaty
has been urged when the moment it is accom-
plished we may be the unwilling spectators of the
scene Just enacted in Samoa, but upon scale that
pinches our commerce and our pride. Just what
this treaty has done for our commerce may be
judged by these comparisons: Our trade with the
Sandwich Islands in 1884 was eleven millions; with
Japan, thirteen millions; with the Central Ameri-
can States nine millions. We sent fleets and took
costly political measures to open Japan. thirty
years ago, and yet our trade with that Empire of
over thirty millions of people exceeds that with
Hawaii by only two millions We have been trad
ing with China for e century, and vet that Empire
gives us less than twice the commerce we get from
Hawai- From ali British Australasia we get only
two millions more than from Hawaii These facts
exhort to vigilance in guarding the foothold we
have gained in these islands The Reciprocity Treaty
was made to secure trade, and our own merchants
have made profit out of that trade, and by sin
gular inversion and peryersion, this fact is offered
TO the Government as an argument for abroqatiOn
Per contra, we suppose. If our merchants had
lost in that commerce. if for their risk and their
enterprise they had reaped insolvency, the treaty
would have been called by these critics a success!
To sustain this trade with those islands and up
hold the conditions by which only it can exist is a
national interest, and is of primary and intense
| Importance to this city and coast. Let US be
warned by Samoa, and increase the vigilance which
has SO far yielded great returns. We call the at
tention of the East TO the fact that those islands
were commercially dormant until American enter
prise reused it. True, that enterprise centeTed ii
this city, but out of it has grown manufactures
fleets of iron steamers and sail vessels that carrS
our flag and dignity the American name. The
Eastern press may be inclined to put n vulgar est
mate upon its importance, but it is of as grea
value and its results relatively important al
| those born of the vim of Chicago and the othe
| busy centers of the East.