The Indianapolis journal. [volume] (Indianapolis [Ind.]) 1867-1904, 1898-07-11
TOO MUCH FOR THE OCCASION.

Having had the text given them Demo-
cratic organs are troubling themselves
about the future of Hawaii One of them
remarks that Hawaii contains fifty thou
sand contract slave laborers, principally
Chinese" AS matter of fact, 1853 Chinese
and $500 Japanese laborers were under con-
tract in 1896. After evolving this bugaboo of
fifty thousand contract slave laborers the
editor proceeds as follows:
What right have we to keep them or the
horde of South sea islanders from coming to
the United States? We have made them
part OF our own population without respect
TO their wishes, and they may yet be
plague TO us to work our undoing. Under the
manipulation of worldwide trusts using this
cheap labor we will pave the way to destroy
both the beet sugar and cane sugar indus
tries of the United States. The tobacco, rice
and cotton industries will also suffer.
AS we have not made the foreigners in
Hawaii a part of our own population they
have no right to come to the United States.
So far as Chinese immigration is concerned,
the resolutions of annexation prohibit it in
the following languages:
There shall be no further immigration of
Chinese into the Hawaiian islands, except
on such conditions as are now or may here
s s De allowed by the laws of the United
states: and no Chinese, by reason of any
thing herein contained, shall be allowed to
enter the United States from the Hawaiian
islands.
Thus all of the fearful probabilities which
the editor who is quoted has conjured up
are swept away. If Chinese immigration
were possible before the annexation, it was
stopped by the adoption of the resolutions.
AS for the products of Hawaii all Of them
have been coming to the United States free
of duty more than dozen years under a
able men created by the resolutions to de-
wise code for the government of Hawaii
will doubtless see to it that any existing
system of contract labor which came from
the old native rule will be abolished Fur
thermore. it should assuage the grief which
seems to be overwhelming the mind of the
Democratic editor quoted to remark that
half dozen islands having a total area of
$40 square miles, a considerable part of
which is too broken for cultivation, is rather
a small parade ground upon which to mar
shall worldwide trusts The disaster
which he foresees is altogether too mon
strous to have it's seat of manufacture in
a bit of territory somewhat smaller than
one-fifth of the area of Indiana, $500 miles
from our nearest port, with a population
not much over half that of an average con-
gressional district A few islands which
cannot be enlarged, exporting to us yearly
less than $SsOO0oOO worth of sugar, $162 600
worth of rice 600 worth of bananas and
no cotton or other products worth naming
cannot destroy the sugar and cotton-grow-
ing interests of the United States.
OF course, this jeremiad, which is taken
from the Frankfort Crescent. will go the
rounds, but those who are making use of it
to piece out the scanty pattern of OPPOSE
ton run great risk of being guyed for
making so loud and hopeless lamenta-
ton over so small a matter as Hawaii,
which is needed to give us control of the
Pacific