The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1901-07-04
ANNEXATION THOUGHTS.

ANNCkA HUN iGIOOO1tSt
Our admired If not venerated con-
temporary, the Independent, begins its
Fourth of July reflections as follows:
We want to enjoy the great day to-
morrow, and we have never been known
to say 1--WE told you so!'' but we would
like an honest opinion from the kama
ainas who annexed US, against the will
and wish of the Hawaiians and their
friends. whether they do not feel rather
cheap and wish that they hadn't under
taken the job. We are simply trying to
get information and If Anterior, Bald
win. Irwin and the other roaring annex
ationists of 1893 will step forward and
say that they are pleased, we shall put
our pencil inside our left cheek and wink
at Them and say Bah"
Every situation has it's drawbacks and
1t is undeniable that the annexation we
all worksd for in 1898 and afterwards,
deprived the Islands, when it came, of
certain good things they had enjoyed
and would have been better off to keep;
but 1t must not be forgotten that the
gains from annexation are greater
than the losses and that the latter,
barring a judiciary lowered in brains
ana character anu III Lie I'LL I
of politics, were foreseen and prepared
for and in some degree discounted.
The principal difficulty has been the
disturbance of the labor needed to raise
sugar, but 1t was an issue between an
nexation with these troubles and sep
arate autonomy with the free sugar
market of the United States cut of
During 1897 the sugar trust boasted,
with good cause, that it had killed the
scheme to annex Hawaii to the Union;
and our friend the Independent hailed
the boast as one well taken. So sure
was the trust of it's success that 1t be-
gan to move against the reciprocity
treaty and the San Francisco Call, the
Coast advocate of that monopoly, con-
tanned leader after leader denouncing
the free importation of Hawaiian sugar
on the ground that it was menace to
the beet sugar farming of the Main
land. This argument was repeated by
the beet sugar men of the United States
and was paraphrased by the cane sugar
men of Louisiana; and it undoubtedly
biased many Senators and Representa-
tives against u.s. We believe that, but
for the war of 1898, which made Hawaii
a naval L acessity to the United States,
the present year would have seen us
not only outside Of the Union but dis
tinctly and ruinously outside the
American sugar market. What would
1t have profited US to have cheap labor
IL we had been forced to pay a high
duty on our sugars exported to the
Mainland-a duty which the sugar in
terests of the United States would have
made still higher If necessary to secure
efficient protection to the e-growers.
But could we even have been sure of
an undisturbed labor market? Hawaii
well remembers the mounting flood of
incoming Japanese free laborers'' and
"students"-laborers who did not work
and students who did not study What
were they here for? The Islanders be-
gan to see when proposals were made
to give them the suffrage on the ground
of the "most-favored-n clause in
the japanese treaty. Those were the
days when the obstreperous Akiyama
came here on an ironclad; days when
a former Japanese Consul General here
told an American war correspondent in
Japan that his country would insist
upon the japanese resident of Hawaii
having the same rights as an English
or American resident Japan may not
have deemed it possible to annex Ha-
wall politically but that empire saw a
chance to make 1t a sort of commercial
dependency and to control, through an
ultimate majority of votes, its domestic
politics and perhaps its foreign policy.
1t may seem ridiculous to think of a
Japanese President and Legislature for
the Hawaiian Republic, but IL Japan
had secured the same rights for her
subjects that the subjects and citizens
OF other foreign powers enjoyed, she
would not have hesitated to acquire a
majority Of votes and to make the
most of the chance thus given her. Is
1t four or five years ago that the little
Drown men ventured into strained rela-
lions with the United States over Ha-
wall? 1t Is hardly three years since
the last steamer load of free Iaborers''
and students" were dumped on our
"hafVes, every man of them with $50
IN MS pocket. money loaned him In
Japan and subsequently returned to the
donor. These people came for a pur-
pose which the act of annexation in
stantty checked. Since then the free
iaborers and students have been going
and not coming.
So In dealing with annexation We
must not merely think of what We GOT
into but what we escaped, and the bal
ance Is In our favor. It even justifies
our esteemed contemporary, the hide
pendent, in raising the Stars and Stripes
over its building and getting practice
with the nasal Yankee accent