The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1903-02-22
A Desert Was Turned
Into a Vast
Garden.
Visitor to the Islands Points
Out Some Truths to
islanders.

II the people OF THESE dHalioh 1911
apds are in earnest in their efforts to
jEssee small farmers to come and set
tie in the country, they are at last on
the right road to the Americanization
of the group"
The speaker was one of a party of
tourists, San Francisco business man
with practical knowledge of how the
West has been built up, seated on the
veranda of the Moana Hotel. Under
stand me- he went on. 1.-The farmer
is the man who has made the American
nation great. And it is the small farm
err. not the cattle baron nor the baron
of any other big industry. The man
who controls big industry makes him
self and his associates wealthy, merely
that is, if he succeeds at it. The coun-.
try he operates in is a secondary con-
sideration to him. His market is the
world.
Mind you, 1 would not decry any
industry. But no nation and no state
can know true progress that is depend
ent upon any one thing. Cotton made
the South great, but it did not enable
the planters to muster men enough to
face the embattled farmers from the
North in arms. And the South of today
with diversified industries and many
small farms, is greater than the old
South ever was-and ii grows more cot
ton.
Let me tell you that 1t is not the
small farmer who will be most favored
1T he "a n
fskf land, if he comes here, and show
Aok him what he can grow on it. and
Where he is 10 find a market. He may
get richI Probably he will at least Sc
cure a competency, and raise his family
of Americans as Americans should be |
raised. The soil and the climate are
here, and there are special products
enough of the country, with enough of
a market for them on the mainland. to |
put the matter beyond the experimental
stage. But il is not the small farmer !
who will be most favored. He will do
more, and his American progeny will |
do more for the Hawaiian Islands than
ever the islands can do for him and |
them.
This is a condition brought about in
obedience to the working of an indus
trial law whose operation is immutable.
Look at the states of our great West
today We are none of us old men,
here, and yet we can most of US remem-
Der when a journey over the Union
and Central Pacific railroads was, in a
large measure, a trip across an other
wise painless desert. There was big
cattle ranch here and there in the wilds,
to be sure, but not farmer from the
Nebraska state line to the Sacramento
valley. The loungers at the station in
that desolation were dirty cowboys and
dirtier Indians, and the antelope and
bison fed beside the branded cattle of
the COW baron.
Have any of you gentlemen been
over the Pacific railways lately? Well,
you would not know the country. Ne
braska, Wyoming, Colorado, Utah, even
Nevada, where most of the big cattle
men have gone-tbese are farming
ST 8 now. The homes of the small
fENner lie mile after mile, along the
railroad lines, irrigation bitches, built
by the farmers to reclaim the waste
and not built by government help, are
everywhere, grain fields and thriving [
take up the room of the buff
faIo walIows, and every farmer raising
his own calves and lambs, and giving {
care to them, make up in the aggregate
bigger shipments of cattle and sheep
annually than the old barons ever could
the cattle and sheep are of
quality. The railroads know Z
what the small farmer does for them,
and they are all after him. They make Z
up excursions and sell farmers tickets
TO home-seekers, and plat land in de-