The Pacific commercial advertiser., 1900-12-31
MILLER AND MISSIONARIES.


JOAQUIN Miller. whose taste for dirt
has so often made the habitation of
his muse untenable, does not like the
church going and conservative people
of Hawaii any more than he does those
of other places and climes. Except for
his facility in the making OF verse
some of II good, some of it tolerable,
and the most of it bad-Miller does
not differ from the long-haired, ver-
min-bitten, top-booted, red-shirted,
gin-soaked and profane California
miner of the Vigilance Committee
days. He naturally takes the saloon
view of things. Urged by the sensa-
ton mongers of the Examiner, Miller
came to Hawaii in 1895 to write down
| the government, the planters and the
missionaries, service he performed
quite in mining camp fashion and en-
tirely to the satisfaction OF his en-
ployers. Owing to these facts and to
a Mexican incumbrance he brought
with him to give a touch Of scarlet to
his home life, Miller was treated with
disdain here, finding his social enter
tainment chiefly where easy-going
hackmen took him. Naturally he alb
horred the missionary" the man in 4
clean shirt, the man who pays his
debts, and the man of sober family
life. He had seen with rage sucf
ridiculously decent people destroy the
old raw customs of California, anC
when he found them so we'll intrench
ed here that he could not stride into
their drawing rooms at will, his
inamorata on his arm, he wrote of tht
missionary" and his kind in the spirit
of a Billingsgate loafer berating people
on their way to church. Time ha
somewhat changed his language, bu
his latest TRADE shows that it has no
much moderated his scorn.
We print elsewhere what Miller hal
written in the Newsletter about th
responsible and reputable classes II
, Hawaii. one of the keynotes of which
, is in the lines addressed to the nativ
race:
[ How pitiful and so despoiled
o By those you fed, for whom you toiled
There never yet was a slanderer O
G Hawaii who did not raven about tn
4 'plunder" of the Hawaiian by tn
g missionary" declaring that all th
Y missionaries are rich, and all the ma
o tives landless. and that in the owner
IS ship of the soil wrested from the abe
riginal proprietors lies the treasuI
J. which the missionaries have heape
,r up. 1t is probably useless to try an
10 remove the false impression thus crt
L ated; but it is at least fair to a slal
ce particulars. If Joaquin Miller wou
Id drop poetical license long enough
al ascend to facts, and keep sober whi
D. relating them, we should like to ha'
j. him tell in plain prose, on the bas
nv of information collected here, he
ne many missionaries laboring in Haws
nd left fortunes or even completeness
of their children; and how many of tho
he children, who remained in the sacr
ne profession, ever kept bank accoun
ed AS for other white men, they ha
hit mainly prospered here by creati
cir values in commerce, agriculture
trade. Men took land that was ster
en- because waterless, and paid all that
he was then worth, or else leased it
Ill rentals fixed by the native COVER
me ment. They bored for water and E
md 1t; they put in the most profitai
| crops and raised them; they found
ND market and controlled it. Who "
are robbed? Certainly not the nativ
my whose chiefs owned the land for &C
wn turtles and never raised a tree on
nd nor In parting with such holdings
lad they lose the right to homes of tn
an own, for today, as a native writer la
or ly proved. they are the most numere
the land-holders in Hawaii:
ms REAL PROPERTY OWNERS.
an Hawaians ............ ...............5, 5,
-. American and European .......2
he Corporations ........... ...........
for In other words, although the nat
tn people Of Hawaii are the easiest o
to rob known anywhere in the wo