The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1897-01-18

working for it by making the mass OF
the people here lit for self-government
If II can be done. Perhaps il cannot be
done. l know that il can be done.
There is an absolute need of reforma-
ton in our social fabric. 1t has grown
UP like a wild weed. We need not be
surprised when an Intelligent paper says
that taking the population of Hawaii as
standard, il should be annexed to Mex
leo or Guatamala.' Whose fault is it? If
there has been error in the past We must
correct il soon possible. and stop
taking i'm the oars and drifting along.
Merchants and planters are not re-
formers and builders of states. Wealth
jumps 10 the top of the fence when trou-
bic comes, and sits there until pulled
down. Then it does splendid fighting.
Sugar is the rock of our prosperity, but
economies and moral laws blow il up, and
all other kinds of material prosperity,
with dynamite, if not sound. We want
our civilization on the plantatio and
not in the Fort Street Church or in the
Opera House Because it is not found
there, planter and merchant and all must
suffer alike in the end. Some men call
this kind of talk sentimentalism and inn
practicable. But il is sentiment that
rules the world. The slave owners of the
Southern States of America said before
the war: You can't raise cotton without
slavery; you can't raise il with white
labor 1t cost them five thousand mill
lions of dollars and three hundred thou
sand lives and the abject poverty of a
generation to find out that they We're
wrong. Are the planters OF Hawaii any
wiser than those planters of the South?
If our planters say that they cannot
make sugar with profit with the use of
white labor, they are putting us on the
black list of nations. Agriculture and the
farming class are the life of every nation.
Do you wish the United States to sneer
at us and say: Vast as our domain is,
we don't care FOR an additional acre on
which free institutions cannot be deVel-
oped, where democracy cannot exist, and
the constitution of the United States Will
n | he, f.
ers of the Southern States bawling over
the land: Cotton cannot be raised with
white labor Ithave lived to see the time
when most profitable cotton crops are
raised by free white labor. / believe that
sugar cane can be cultivated here with
white labor. We cannot expect to lie on
our backs and let the gods feed us by
pouring milk and honey down our
throats. We must change the conditions
about us. This means hard 1'Ccii. IA
plenty of il. We cannot help ourselves.
Planter or no planter, sugar or no sugar.
we are subject to economical and social
laws which toss up individuals just
terriers toss up rats. One could see that
every hour of the great civil war of
America. One can see it in the casting
of six millions of votes for Bryan in the
Presidential election. only six hundred
thousand short OF making the beginning
of a new social revolution. The sugar
planters of the West Indies have found
this out. The iron men of New England
found it out. Every great industry must
take into account the broadcast economic
questions. If it does not. it ends in dry
rot or smash up. Some of the great
mercantile establishments of these mod
ern times keep one member of the firm
at nothing but thinking and contriving
and doing the best brain work.
There are many things to encourage
us in the work for annexation, if we do
the best work and abandon the creed
that the devil take the hindmoSt. Uncle
Sam sometimes has fits, and he is quite
likely when he has them bad some day
to snake us into his pocket. even if
things not quite right here