The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1899-09-20
NEGRO LABOR.

When Mr. Barnett, a Louisiana sugar
planter visiting these Islands, tells us
that the proposition to bring negro
labor from the Southern States to
these Islands is not tenable," he makes
substantially a correct statement, from
his point of view, but it is not correct
when looked at from another and
higher point of view. Those who are
familiar with the negro character, and
the conditions which, in the past, and
even now confront the laborer in these
Islands, have discouraged any attempts
towards fostering negro immigration.
But they have asserted that under the
proper conditions, the negro could be
made fair and reliable laborer. The
creation of those conditions by the
planters of these Islands has been re-
garded as impracticable so long as the
laborer was morally regarded as a
''chattel," that is a creature out of
whom the most work was to be obtain
ed, at the lowest wages. For moral
despotism is as grinding as physical
despotism.
The Southern planters have made,
and now make the same mistake.
There has been no general movement
in the South toward elevating the con-
dition of the negro laborer. So far as
civilizing him is concerned, the South
ern people have paid little or no at
tention to it, and have left him gen.
orally to shift for himself. Such an
affair as the building up of a well or
dered negro community is unknown.
The whites, broken up and ruined by
the war, have had neither the time
nor the inclination to improve the con-
dition of the black. They cannot be
blamed for taking this attitude, SO
long as they do what other whites are
doing elsewhere. They have spent
money, not illiberally, in the so-called
education" of some of the negroes,
and there are many intelligent men in
the South who see the vital necessity
of making the negro good citizen.
But the great majority of the Southern
people are still Influenced by their be-
lief in his inferiority, and the useless
character The task is too gigantic,
and discouraging. SO the progress of
the black race is largely due to North
ern energy and philanthropy. The idea
of giving the negro a home of his own,
on or near the sugar and cotton plan
tations, and of having him to do the
best manual labor, exists only in a few
places in the South. Such work is re-
garded as the mission of philanthropy,
and there has not yet appeared the
broad view of the relations of employer
and employee, which clearly sees any
profit in really improving the condi-
ton of the employee.
The influences, since the Civil war,
so far as the labor question is con-
cerned, have been rather towards the
degradation of the black. With mil
lions of acres of untitled land, the
tendency has been to exclude him from
it, as an owner, because he is shiftless
neighbor. But the negro does buy
land, and as the owner of it, does just
what the Anglo-SaXon and the Italian
does when he becomes land owner.
The Southern planter, as a rule, for
there are some noted exceptions to it,
leaves the negro in the ignorance and
superstition which was the environ
ment of slavery, and then seeks the
Italian, because he is better laborer.
The Civil war ended with the inhu-
mainly, on the part of the North, of
ar,onc;patino five millions of negroes
and with casting fiat on their backs,
the aged. the sick, the helpless, with
out securing to one of them an acre
of land on which to erect a home.
This was the Juggernaut of justice.
1t was done according to~the light of
those days. and it is not for us to CEN
sure those who did it. But the rough
policy of the North, together with the
inherited habits of Southern thought
and practice, have prevented the negro
from rising more rapidly, and have set
loose a large horde of them, who are
excitable, restless, demoralized and are
willing 10 emigrate in any direction.
Over 10000 of them emigrated in one
year to Kansas, not many years ago,
but they gave Kansas no benefits.
The South does not, and cannot,
treat the negro cruelty. But she treats
him unwisely from commercial and
industrial standpoint. AS conse-
uuence she is driven to the importa-
ton of Italians which is. from the
standpoint of political economy, a false
aoo0omy