The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1904-11-29
FARMERS AND THEIR MARKET.

writer on Diversified Agriculture
in the Sunday paper says:
Thu conclusion I think is. that about
ANYTHING can be raised on Maui ny
skilled farmers, but it can not be SOFA.
To invite farmers from the continent
to settle there under such clfcuih-
stances I do not think would be right
To start farming here with less thah
$1,000 would be hazard with very poor
RANGES. A small farmer, who has
icon abIa To save so much money on
the continent, had better stay Wnere
he is.
The tens of thousands who went
pioneering in the United States gradu-
ally pushing the frontier over the Al
leehsnies. the Mississippi and the
Rockies. had much the same trouble
at first about selling products. There
were no roads, no markets and very
little money. But the pioneers hung
ON to their good farms, perhaps send
ing their sons further West to clear
new ones, supporting themselves well
and fighting multitude of pests
four-footed, winged and invertebrate
Other farmers gradually came and the
country was settled up, small villages
forming where the storekeepers, min
lister, lawyer, blacksmith, carpenter,
cooper, lumber-buyer, tanner. tavern
keeper, horse-trader, schoolmaster and
wool-buyer made their homes and
bought things from the farmer
for sustenance and to send away IN
trade Gradually the villages grew,
the highways were improved. the
stage and perhaps the canal came,
later the RAILROAD entered and the
farmer found himself with market
and a competence.
The conditions are similar on the
outlying islands of Hawaii but much
less arduous. We doubt that there isl
a place in this group. susceptible of
cultivation, which is fifty miles from
a steamer landing. Where the great
work of the American pioneers was
done, hundreds of miles beyond the
settled frontiers of civilization, there |
were few in1ets or outlets for trade. |
there were forests to subdue and hui
man foes to combat Owing to climatic I
causes, six months of every year were
months of enforced idleness, where,
as a rule, producers turned into con-
sumers. Yet the, farmer held on and
WON And he can win here with ease
where his forefathers won there with
hardships
The point the Advertiser wishes TO
make now that the varied producti-
bility of the soil is conceded, is that
If the vacant public lands of the group /
are divided among white farmers, the
latter will make their own markets
and roads and secure their own trans
portation They have done it every
where in the mainland United States
and why not in the insular portion?
If 5000 white people titled the vacant
land of Maui, Lahaina and Wailuku
would fill up with white people come
to do business with them: there would
be sea-transportation lines fighting for
their cargoes, and their voting
strength would compel all the public
improvements they might require. 1t +
is absurd to think that the first step
IN pioneering must be a nearby mar
ket and the means to reach it. Who
is going to build steamers for a COM
merce that has not materialized or
roads to farms that no one has oc-
cupied? Things do not work that way
in trade. First come the productive
inhabitants and then the means of do
ing business with them follows, No one
need fear that crops of good sisal. to-
bacco, pineapples vanilla and the like
viii be lost for want of market; for
so long as market for such things
exists it viii reach out for the raw
material.