The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1901-09-09

international rights, / say. for as to
the growing Importance of these there
can be no smallest doubt. One need not
De -oazzled or blinded by the glamour of
imperial expansion in order to recognize
that no republic such as ours can draw
hne round Its domestic territory and
ignore Its duties and its opportunitjes
with reference to the rest of the world
| we must trade with other countries than
| our own; and If we have anything good
! that they have not, we must needs wish.
/ and even though there should be nectni
airy profit in it, may rightly wish. to i'm
part 1t to them. But we cannot do this
unless we can get at the physical re-
sources and conveniences which shall en-
able us to do SO. Now, the Hawaiian
Islands stand prominently for one of
! these conVeniences. No traffic with the
great East can be maintained except at
almost rHinous cost without some foot
i hold between its coasts and ours for a
/ Pacific coaling-station, and no greater
+ Opportunity for the enlargement Of GER
1 tain departments of agriculture and
/ trade than the Hawaiian Islands afford
could easily be discovered. If We do our
( duty toward them, we shall find cur IN
terest IN doing it, and to that duty and
to those toward whom we are to ais
( chafge. Il there Is no great Wo1ld-Dowel-
mat lsa so near as we. Geographical,
commercial, and moral considerations
hereAseenl all to point one way.
Bat, alasi It would seem as if the peo-
BE toward whom we are to discharge
such duty would soon cease 10 be. There
IS one mysterious effect of civilization
upon weaker races concerning which the
historian and the psychologist have vet
70 give US more light The United States
since its people first went to the sand
Wien Islands, was carried on no exterrni-
mating war. With shame and confusion
il must be owned that it has taught them
many vices, or rather perhaps it would
be more true to say it has corrupted
them with the faint of forms of those
vices which We're distinctly it's own. But,
on the other hand, it has given them the
arts and learning, and civic order, and
the examples of industry and thrift But
it cannot be said that they have priced
the learning highly, or widely profited
/ by it. For no reason which can be di-
rectly traceable to US, it must be owned
that they are decaying race. and their
more recent statistics reveal this with
dramatic significance According to
Captain Young whom I have already
quoted, the eight islands composing the
Hawaiian group, have a total popula-
ton of 10000 of which, however. only
$4,000 are Hawaiians. There are 10000
people Of mixed descent, in part Hawaii
an; the rest are Chinese. japanese, Por-
( tuguese, and other Europeans, of which
last, with Americans, there are 1900. In
other words, nearly two-th:rds of the
people of these islands are ether than
Hawaiian. That this proportion is likely
to be increased along the same line seems
probable, and the time seems likely to
come when the native Hawaiian like the
native North American Indian, VIII nave
disa ppeared.
Who they are who will ultimately be
dominant in his place it is not easy to
forecast, At any moment the United
States may close its Hawaiian doors to
those races which, of the Eastern weird,
are nearest to the islands, and when are
now represented there by large proper
tion of the population-some twenty-four
thousand Japanese and fifteen thousand
Chinese-who today, in fact, taken to-
gether, make an element larger than that
represented by the Hawaiians themselves
or any other peoples. Both these races
have brought to the Hawaiian Islands
forces and qualities which, originally
We're foreign to the native people AS
the eye ranges the distant hills;des which
flank the rear of Honolulu, it is arrested
by the shining patches of ordered YER
dure which, terrace upon terrace, climb
UP along the slopes; and the inquirer is
told, in every instance, that these are
j T.
panese, who have in so many like places
taught the soil to yield its increase
where it never did before. Such quail
ties, IN any people, are sources of power
and wealth. and when it is remembered
that behind the Japanese have come the
Chinese, whose thrift in the Eastern
world is q proverb like that of the
French or Germans in the Western ii IS
plain thar their influence upon the future
of the Hawaiian Islands must be deep
and lasting. Already, in the case OF the
Chinese, has their capacity for agricul-
turai work revealed itself in the vast
sugar plantations which American and
other capital has acquired and is admin
istering with characteristic skill and
profit; and already there are tokens of
the wealth which, aided by this foreign
labor, these can extract from q rich soil
and from singularly favorable climatic
conditions
So the problem is set: the mixture Of
races, energies, industries and of the
higher moral qualities with which these
various strains. ancestries, and activities
stand for. There are other theaters in
which the same drama is being played
out under much broader and it may be-
more complex conditions, but not in
which q more Interesting or indeed dra-
matte experiment is being made. 1t VIII
be for the government and the people of
the American republic to demonstrate
that they are equal to a task irr itself so
delicate. and in ITS consequence so
grave and important
@'The New Hawaii" p. 327.