The Daily bulletin. [volume] (Honolulu [Hawaii]) 1882-1895, 1891-07-01
DEVELOP ALL RESOURCES.

ringing in the local press for many
years. urging it as the part of wis
dom for our men of capital and en-
terprise to try some other wealth.
producing line than sugar raising,
should have increased force now that
conditions have been materially
changed by United States tariff
legislation. Not that the country
should cry out before it is seriously
burt by such legislation, but because
If there has been any reason before
in advocating diversity of indus
tries, there is more than ever now
with any degree of danger threaten
ing The one industry that has been
the national mainstay. Anybody
who does not recognize that sugar
has been not Gully the chief source Of
private wealth, but of the ''sinews of
war to the state, must be possessed
Of a strange infatuation which
argument would be as futile to over
come as jet of water from u garden
hose would be to quench the fires of
Kilauea. What the advocates of di.
versfied industries have contended
for, however, is that there is va
riety of soil with a favOrableness of
climate in these islands, which
makes it feasible to develop other
great resources of private wealth and
public revenues besides the cultiva-
ton of sugar. Ii is to be hoped,
that even moderate apprehensions
of financial depression from the re-
suits of American tariff legislation
may be most agreeably disappointed
But even if sugar is to recover any
thing like parity with The high
prices of the past, it should still be
the duty of all who have any indu-
ence with the public to cry
out necessarily for variation
in the means of keeping the
wheels of commerce revolving ard
the car of state progressing. 1t
is not impossible to conceive of
much lower sugar market than any
average of the past, without the
country having to face the fate of
"blue ruin" With improved meth
DDS and better machinery III field
and mill, wherein Hawaiian planters
have taken leading position in the
world, the profits may be kept com
paratively we'll up while the market
prices 60 sadly down. With this
possibility to cheer the country in
crisis Of uncertainty, however, the
desirability of other lines of indus
trial development is not diminished.
1t is easy to write, perhaps some
one says, about increasing the scope
of Hawaiian enterprise to include
new exports of magnitude, and talk
is cheap, The best answer to imbe-
cile caviling of this sort is to be
found in the practical efforts Of men
experienced in the initial uphill work
of sugar raising itself. There has
lately been reported the enterprising
beginnings made by the MesSrs.
Horner and other sugar planters in
coffee planting, into which more than
one company specially organized for
the purpose has also gone. That the
country is capable of producing as
good coffee as the world knows has
been fully proved. That the coun-
try cannot produce the best of coffee
in quantity to make that product a
great factor in Hawaiian exports
none but chronic croaker could as
sumo a low enough pitch of express
sion to assert. AS the country has
neglected coffee and other feasible
industries while sugar was high, it is
only to be hoped that, when rich re-
turns begin to come in from coffee,
capital and enterprise will not slop
over too much into the coffee pot and
utterly neglect other available pro-
missing lines of enterprise. This
may be considered an idle caution,
but the history of modern enterprise
shows that famine succeeds feast
whenever the feast has stayed within
reach long enough to attract an un-
due proportion of banqueters. This
is seen, for instance, in the over pro-
ducton caused by artificial stimua-
ton of particular industries by legis-
lation.
Coffee is only one Of many new
industries in which our people might
branch out There are many fruits
and vegetables that do or would
thrive on Hawaiian soil which could
be made profitably marketable by