The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1900-01-25
4 CIVIC FEDERATION.

that municipal league or civic teder
alton be formed is a good one on gen.
eral principles Honolulu has Ions
needed a powerful and compact body
of citizens self-charged with a certain
responsibility for good local govern
ment. If it had possessed a society OF
this kind we may doubt that the
health authorities, for example, would
have been permitted, after 1896, to ac-
cept a credit of $4,000 and more out
Of the treasury and yet have left Chi
natown in a state Of unexampled mas
I tiness. other officials would not have
/ been permitted, without rebuke, to so
to sleep in the face of fragrant abuses.
| But as things were, (and in a certain
degree still are) no very rigid system
of accountability obtained. Honolulu
has long been a correspondence place
bureaucratically, and scandal has oc-
Cured only to be smoothed over and
covered up. That is one reason why
newcomers become instantly critical
and justly critical, of much that they
see around them. Things happen here
and attract but scant notice which
would not be tolerated in any we'll
governed municipality of the world.
A few years agO-under the monarchy,
we believe-a local statesman was
caught selling merchandise. in his ca
pacity Of private dealer, to the Depart
ment of which he was the head, and at
his own price. If we remember Alright.
the merchandise was hay. But the
thing was easily settled. There have
been other and later instances in point
but has any one made a court mat
ter of them? Not conspicuously! Yet
in an American city a civic federation
on the one hand and a grand jury on
the other, would have gone to the bot
tom of the scandals and raised an out
cry among the culprits. the echoes of
which might have finally come back
from jail
Occasionally the press has done
something to remedy these evils, but
the task, owing to an unresponsive
public sentiment, has usually been a
thankless one. With a grand jury and
a civic federation to summon to its aid,
the fearless and unpurchasable part
of the press might have done a great
deal more to keep the right side of
Honolulu uppermost. 1t might even
have compelled our richest and most
powerful estates to subdue their greed |
long enough to provide for the decent |
of their properties. There |
Is no end of good to come of such a
and so we cordially agree |
with Mr.. Smith, as philosophical cit
izen, that the sooner we have a civic /
federation the better. The grand jury |
will come in of itself, later on, with the
other American machinery of justice |
Mr.. Smith speaks particularly OF the |
need of a federation to look after san
itary conditions. In a way, this is /
true. The hard work of inspection, |
however, should be in the hands of
paid sanitary police. If left even to |
a civic federation it would suffer from |
the application of the principle that |
what is everybody's business is no
body's business. Still, as we have al |
ready said, such a society would find !
plenty to do in holding officials up to |
the highest standard of their duty. in |
intoxicating civic virtues, in exposing I
public frauds, in encouraging improve
ments, and in seeing that Honolulu is /
well governed. To such ends Mr.. /
Smiths wholesome project would I'M
Tailingly contribute