The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1891-10-26
THE DAILY
WHO ARE SUPPORTED BY THE SUGAR
INDUSTRY ?

An impression prevails among a GER
tain class in this country that only a
very few persons are interested in sugar,
and that the prosperity of the great
majority would not be seriously affected
even if that industry were ruined. How
fundamentally erroneous this idea is
may easily be shown, and in the first
place the notion so current that the
number OF sugar owners is very small is
an error. The incorporation of the lead
ing plantations has resulted in consid-
cradle distribution of small quantities of
stock in the hands of large number of
persons. While it is true that the bulk
of the stock is the property of few
hundred persons, it is no less true that
hundreds more are owners of a few
shares each, and that many have in
vested the whole of their hard-earned
savings in stock. We know personally
Of many cases of the kind.
1t is common error to suppose that
Hawaiians have no interest in sugar. AS
matter of fact, statistics show that
nearly fourth of the laboring Hawaiian
population is employed .on the planta-
tons. If we add those who own stocks
and those who lease land to the planta-
lions, it will appear that not far from a
third OF the Hawaiian population are
directly interested in the success of sugar
and draw their support from it. The
same thing is true of the foreign popula-
ton. More than 5000 Portuguese are
employed on the plantations; more than
600 other foreigners are employed as
overseers, managers, carpenters, team
sters, book and time-keepers, etc., etc.
1t thus appears that the class of those
directly interested in sugar includes
large proportion of all the races and
classes of our greatly-mixed popu-
lation. Upon all those described, q
blow to our leading product would fall
with crushing weight. But to those
who are only indirectly concerned in
sugar such blow would be hardly less
disastrous, and these latter comprise no
less than the entire residue of the nom
Aslatic population, saving few excep-
tons too unimportant to be noticed here.
vitality, though indirectly, interested
in sugar are all those engaged in the
transportation and distribution of the
product; ALL those engaged in fur
nishing plantation supplies, and 3.-all
those who perform services for and
furnish goods, wares and merchandise
to all those who work directly or indi-
rectly for the plantations, and to those
who draw the dividends and expend the
profits of the plantations. These classes
include all the wholesale commission
houses with their large staff of clerks,
all the retail merchants, great and small,
all those in the shipping business-mana-
gers, clerks and sailors, all the mechan-
les In the Union and Honolulu Iron
works, and all those mechanics and
contractors who build houses and per
form services of any kind for any one
directly or indirectly interested in sugar.
Our whole industrial society is composed
OF an elaborate system of wheels within
wheels, and the power which drives the
whole vast machine is SUGAR. What
would you sailors of the sugar fleet do
without sugar? The expansion of that
industry brought the whole fleet into ex-
istence We all remember when the
entire steam marine consisted of one old
vessel, the OLD KILAUEA. No great de-
mand for labor on her! What would
You do, gentlemen of the Union
Ironworks, without the Eva Planta-
ton? The demand for machinery
is the demand for your labor and
your wages could and would never be
paid, without that demand. The inter-
vention of a middleman, the Iron Works
Co., cannot obscure so plain fact.
To cut long story short we ALL live