The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1899-05-12
DUTY OF THE GOVERNMENT.

come III reality d CIVILIZED pace must
admire Mr.. Allan Herbert's efforts to
establish the condition under which
alone it can exist He has urged, as
the Advertiser has urged, the creation
of diversified industries. But If the
people, capable of carrying on these
diversified industries were here, ana
ready for work, where would they get
the land needed for the purpose? Inc
bystapder says: ''Shove them OFF to
Hawaii" Yet this island of Oahu IS
sparsely settled, it's valleys are hardly
inhabited. and the laboring man or
small farmer can get no land. 1t was
said some years ago that the time
would come when the lands about
Waialua would be occupied by small
farmer proprietors; that an ideal viii
lage would exist there. But the title
TO the land is now in the sugar-god,
and that great stretch Of fertile plain
is in the hands of a manager who rep
resents a corporation, many of the
stockholders in which have never seen,
and will never see the place, and will
take no interest in it excepting as it IS
a dividend payer. And so all of the
land in this island available for small
proprietors is gradually passing into
the hands of the sugar corporations,
who will be willing to permit only d
tenancy of the soil on condition that
it shall owe allegiance, first to the god
of the dividend. and after that may
enjoy any desultory worship of God
and Humanity that is not inconvenient
to the plantation.
Any one ought to acknowledge that
it was an error on the part of the
Government in not compelling, for in
stance. the, EVA corporation, when it
asked for leave to increase its capital
stock, without the payment of a dollar
for it, to set aside portion of its land
for the uses of society.
The Government could well say:
"YOu ask for a benefit; YOU ask us to
let you put out millions of stock, and
put three millions of dollars into your
pockets-we grant it on condition that
you put aside perpetually part of
your land for the homes of 'tthe bone
and sinew'' of Hawaii-as a contribu-
tion to the police force of the commu-
nity-for every well-settled farmer be-
comes one of the guardians of peace
in every community. This may take q
trifiing sum off your dividend in mon
ey, but it will add vastly to the assets
dividends at only sixty instead of sew
enty-five per cent on the original in
vestment, but for this sacrifice you can
erect chapel on the plantation dedi-
Gated to Our Lady of Sorrow" in
which you can enter and freely lay
before the Lord your troubles arising
out of meager dividend.
OF course, the powers of the Gov
to dictate terms, in the inter-
ests of civilization, to a corporation,
are indefinite under the laws, but the
needs of the hour required that the eff
fort should have been made.
1t is possible that the community
would have refused to stand behind
the Government, if it eXacted such
terms, but even with gloomy prospects
of success, the terms should have been
Stockholders receiving
fifty per cent dividends would more
readily agree to turning five per cent
Of the cash dividends into moral"
dividends than the stockholders who
are now paying prices for stock that
will yield in the long run not over ten
per cent dividends.
AT best only a few corporations are
willing to permit their affairs to be
by sunday school" consid-
erations, so that part of their lands
of the whole. The Government itself,
all of the people, should,
if it has the power, dictate to the
plantations the terms on which they
other hand, it may be said that the
sugar corporations under the iron ne
cessities of the labor situation, will be
compelled to do that which
should be done After interests have
become vested it will be difficult to
make any changes, for the first losers
in the reconstruction will be those who
cannot afford to stand the loss.
The sugar corporations must be pro-
tected. At the same time the commu-
nifty must be protected. Can it be
done by transferring the most of the
available land on this island to cor
porations, the stockholders of which
will be in all proba bilitv within few
years. residents of the Pacific coast and
absentee proprietors?