The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1904-07-24
HONOLULUS POPULATION.
CONTINUED from page -

| Well that is true but what of it?
| What does it indicate? For one thing
| it indicates discomfort and discomfort
is the mother of progress. If Shake
speare had been content in the COM
pany of the great men he met at the
Mermaid Tavern, the worlds greatest
book would never have been written;
if Newton had been content to sit I'M
der his apple tree and eat the fruit as
it dropped into his lap, the law of
gravitation might still remain informu-
lated; if the puritanS had been content
with anything less than absolute free
f~dom of religious belief, the United
States might still be a British colony.
Discomfort reaches out for something
better and that means civilization, The
sleepy, self-satisfied cities of Central
America are three hundred years be-
hind Honolulu in everything that makes
for progress. Discomfort may not al
ways indicate energy, intelligence, am
bition but it's absence does mean in
dolence and stagnation.
Again, as has already been said. the
directory publisher is able pretty well
to size UP the bank account of the
city that he canvasses. He solicits
every business man for an advertise
ment or subscription. Without adver-
Using patronage the book could not
be published, the expense being too
great.
If a merchant or professional man
refuses to give an order for the local
directory, he usually feels obliged to
give his reason for the refusal and that
reason is never that he does not con-
slider the directory a useful book or
one that is a benefit to the community
at large. He cannot afford it; he does
a strictly cash business and has no
use for it. He explains all about his
methods. gossips about his neighbors,
knocks his competitors, kicks about
taxes and municipal extravagance,
swears he knows the country is going
to the "demnition bowwows' and prob
ably winds up by asking the price of a
page add and signing an order for five
times as much as the solicitor origin
ally suggested. There seems to be an
impression abroad in Honolulu that the
city is experiencing hard times. Some
of my friends tried to dissuade me
from attempting to publish this year
They thought I would find il impossi-
bic to do business enough to pay ex-
penses: The manager of a daily news
paper told me L had his sympathy.
but am an OptlnllSC. L nave conf
dence in people. 1 would rather have
confidence. A life of caution and sus-
picion is a life of misery. 1 rather go
broke every other year than live that
way. We went cheerfully to work and
the result has amply justified my con-
fidence in Honolulu. We have taken
more orders here than ever before
They average smaller but the total a.
mount exceeds all previous records. I
am still an optimist. I believe in Ho-
nolulu I believe in it's present. as
well as it's future. If some patriotic
citizen would hire a highlander to kill
off few of the more prominent
knockers it might serve as a warning
and cure the smaller fry of the PERM
cious habit-"One swallow does not
make spring nor one kicker hard
times but what everybody expects is
pretty sure to come. When a man
thinks he has the bellyache, he usual
" has it and when a whole city full
thinks and says its hard times it usu-
ally is-when a man permits himself
to get scared he is pretty sure to lose
his orin o-,1 <1o~ - iy7eoo+'--,- 49,