The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1895-07-09

native pastors to the front had just
been inaugurated, there were 200
Asiatics in the land. Twelve years
later there were 5000. Eighteen years
later there were Is, 900. Now, thirty
years later, there are $4,000. The Ha-
waiian people could not adjust them
selves to this sudden and great incur
sion of a new and unframed element.
The Asiatics came with their faults
and vices. They were thrifty, and
yet they were mostly pagan. Few If
any of them had families, and they
became parasites to the Hawaiian
family life. Their influence was SIM
ply more than the morality of the ma
tive people could bear.
The presence of such horde, almost
entirely without family life, worked
directly TO encourage prostitution and
gambling and drunkenness and the
opium habit.
And the Chinese, as soon as they
were loosed from their contracts, be-
gan to set up for themselves. They
took the native homesteads on rental
and made it possible for many natives
to live without work. The thrift
which has made the land to smile
again with productiveness has 30
far mostly encouraged the easy
going, unambitious portion of the
native community to live without
labor.
If this is the way things must go in
the meeting of the races, the stronger
not only grating their vices on the
weaker, but by their very virtues put
ting the weaker at disadvantage 1T
is unfortunate, and iJ accounts 10 part
for the present state of affairs IN the
native community. 1t helps explain
10 l-uaGz nf fhElr t'hriSfi-
anity.
Now add to the baIefulness of this
mighty power of evil that has come
in these later years from the Orient,
like vein visited upon the native peo-
pie by the presence of corrupt ele-
ments from Christian countries, and
we may fairly conclude that it would
have been most remarkable had not
the native Christianity appeared just
at this time so battered and weak.
During the last twenty years the
power of the saloon has been felt as
never before. 1t. is now at the full
ness of its strength and is bringing
to the native race. 1t is
an institution for which our clviliza-
ton is responsible.
The evil influences represented by
the corrupt white man have greatly
increased during the last thirty years,
and are perhaps ten-fold stronger now
than they used to be in the days of
the missionary fathers.
We mention one more disturbing
fact. 1t is within these later years of
the experiment of a native pastorate,
that the school system has been so
completely changed.
In place of being taught in their
own tongue native children are now
in, EnnliSh
In this way the hold of the native
Christian teacher has been weakened
and for a time the general tone of
thought lowered.
The lines along which the thought
of the people had been set working
with such activity by the missionary
have, as it were, been thrown
out of gear. The entire machin-
cry of thought has been chang
ed. New adjustments are being
made which in the end will
doubtless result in great advantage,
but meanwhile, till they are achieved,
the situation has been marked by
decided weakening of native Christian
thought. Such facts as these explain
the present condition of the churches
and the extremity to which the native
pastor have been pushed.