The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1900-01-23
AGAIN TIE BISHOP ESTATE.


The Board OF Health uncovered a
dangerous nuisance yesterday at Kukui
and Nuuanu streets. The visiting com
mittee entered a new building and
found, at the back door, three shall
low cesspools emitting a fearful
stencil. Near one of these plague pits,
in dirty back room, a bubonic corpse
had been found that morning. The
relation between the corpse and the
cesspOols was not, perhaps, as clear
as the relation between the cesspools
and the Bishop Estate, but 1t was clear
enough for all practical purposes.
The Bishop Estate is prompt with
excuses. These are among its stock in
trade. The trustees say that they can
not be held responsible because, for
sooth. they had put a clause in their
leases compelling the Chinese tenants
to keep the premises clean. Having
done this the comfortable trustees
probably went to sleep. But landlords
cannot evade either moral or legal
responsibility for nuisances on their
property by citing agreements with
tenants. Both parties remain at inter
est and the greater moral responsible
ity, in the present case. rests with
the intelligent white lessons rather
than with the ignorant yellow Iessees.
If. as many scientists believe. the
plague germ is a micro-organism found
dormant in nature and only needing a
nursery of filth to bring it into malig-
nant life, what shall be said of the
owners and estates that have permitted
dangerous nuisances to grow up on
their property and of the authorities
who have failed to obey the plain letter
of the law requiring them to condemn
such nuisances and compel their abate-
ment? These people are the human
agencies of infection, taking their
place in the pillory before the poor
Asiatics, who have lived in filth be-
cause they had to. To be sure there
were no sewers available but there
might have been if millionaire estates
had demanded them. At any rate these
rich proprietors of Chinatown shacks
could have readily provided excavators
OF their own and taken some pains to
enforce, and to assist in creating the
ability among their tenants to obey,
the clauses in their leases requiring
sanitation. But they held off and the
plague aook advantage of their neg
lect.
Even if it is true that the bubOnic
germs did not originate here and that
responsibility for the plague upon the
Chinatown owners and the authorities
Is none the less convincing. Had the
Oriental quarter been kept clean the
germ could have done no harm. The
bacilli of the plague can no more create
an epidemic in a clean town than the
arrival of a gnat on waterless desert
can start a curse of mosquitoes there.
With the terrible object lessons we
have around us there is ground for
hope that, when a new Chinatown
arises, it will be the fruit of repentance
rather than greed. We speak of hope
instead of faith, for faith must falter
before the indurated avarice and cal
lousness of the big estates which have
so long lived upon the proceeds of
plague spots and brothels. Still, an
apprehensive public has the authorities
to look to and these we trust will never
again neglect their duty towards
Chinatown however great the pressure
from the estates may be for liberation
in the makeshift of protecting the pub
lie health from obvious filth by no 9TH
err means than clauses in a lease.
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