The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1902-01-01

1sent. For this reason only a handful
Of American farmers, numbering a
THOUSAND or less, have within the last
lew years ''prospected" these Islands.
They see no fortunes in raising vege
tables with limited home market,
ana a distant foreign market on the
Pacific Coast where even the bananas
OF Bluefieds and Jamaica closely COM
pete with the Hawaiian banana, and
the profits of pineapple cultivation are
rot enticing unless conducted with
great skill. These proSpectOrS find that
Americans must labor here as 1aith-
fully as in the colder zones; a fact
which has not been believed by the
multitude, who have read in the story
Coks that men in the tropics live
without labor. These prospectors have
found that few places, if any, can fur
nish such splendid opportunities for
good living as the United States with
their vast acreage of virgin lands, and
their permanent and reliable home
arketS.
III due time, however, the Anglo-Sax-
on people will spread over the tropics,
and become tllers of the soil. This
is the work of the coming centuries
We are now only at the Morning STAR
ot the movement. These prospectors
one surely profitable industry, the
aking of sugar, and that involves the
investment of large capital. and in
the worlds competition in the produc-
ton of it, demands cheap labor.
There is substantially no other indus
try here, though many are possible af-
tel experiments have been made and
SCCient experience has been obtained.
The immigration of a farming class
will therefore be limited to the few
Y no are in search of a mild climate.
The destruction of the sugar estates,
if that We're possible, and the division
of such estates into small holdings
would not, under present conditions,
attract American farmers. Such divi-
sion would only establish the aliens,
and their descendants on the smaller
holdings, and drive the American set
tier to losing competition with peo-
pie who have fewer wants than his
own. Near as Porto Rico is to markets,
and cheap as it's lands are, only spec
u ators, and few farmers have set
ted there Twenty-Five years ago,
many thousands of Northern men en-
iSrated to Florida, the tropics of
America, but long since their visions
OF fortune vanished and the suffering
OF the immigrants is a sad story in
the history of the white man in the
tropics. If great staples like cotton,
wheat or corn could be raised with the
same or larger profit in the warm
belts. American settlers might engage
in cultivating them; such crops ma
ture in one season. But these are easy
crops which do not appear to do we'll
IT, ar the equator.
The tillers of the soil are the back
bone" of a nation This is a maxim
o: thinkers from the ancient days to
the present hour. We are now con-
1, onted with the question, who are to ,
furnish this backbone to our insular s
Territory? IF the Americans will not,
for many reasons, furnish it, it viii ,
naturally and logically come from the i
1ative-born Asiatics. Latins and part 6
Bawaiians who are now here, ami /
greatly outnumber the Americans, and !,
are quite suitable and willing to ac- +
quire land and ''til1 their own farms" =
These, by the force of their numbers, '
aiced by the excellent education they 9
receive in our schools. will be coliti- Y
ca'ly dominant so long as the princi- V
PES of democracy prevail here. Blu,
for reasons before stated, both the ma +
tive born Asiatics and Latins will adj I
vance on American lines. They Will ],
support and even develop American in r
stitutions, and finally race distinctions r
viii be obliterated just as on the Main +
land, the Frenchmen cannot be dis r.
iirguished from Americans in the third 8
generation. ,,
If Christian civilizat ton reaches a l.;
high plane here, wheth- G
IF the units which compose it are yell {
oW, brown or black, is of no conse- s
:uence @
These views NAV ba -,