The Hawaiian gazette. [volume] (Honolulu [Oahu, Hawaii]) 1865-1918, 1904-08-19
TOURISTS vs.. SETTLERS.

TOURISTS vs.. SETTLERS.
II is curious fact that while an ex-
trao.dinary effort is being made to at
tract transient visitors who are not
eager TO come to Hawaii. an attitude of
| cool Indifference meets-a class of in
vestors that wants to come here and
stay. The tourist who acts as II h,
does not care to know Hawaii at all, is
importuned at the cost of thousand
dollars month to change his mind,
while the farmer, who has Hawaii on
the brain and is writing here all the
time for information, cannot get track
of any land to buy.
And yet every other newly opened
part of the United States makes the
acquisition of settlers its first aim.
Southern California sends out ten PAM
phlets on orange and raisin culture to
one on scenery. Colorado issues vol
umes about mining and farming where
it prints leaflets about hotels and ex-
cursion points. The Florida boom of
twenty years ago was based on the
productiveness of the soil. If one ex-
amines the promotion literature of Cali
fornia he will find that SETTLEMENT
is its key note. Mining, not climate
brought people to California in the first
place; Charles Nordhoffs book on the
openings for agriculture and horticul-
ture in the Golden State created the
second BOOM the third and greatest
was based entirely on land values.
only in Hawaii are the main induce
mcnts for the building up of new
country ignored and energies concen-
trated on attracting guests who stay
but a few days or weeks when they
come at all and who. so far, have cost
us more than they left behind.
What makes the thing the more
amazing is that we boldly challenge, in
the tourist campaign, host of great
difficulties and subside abjectly. when
it comes to getting settlers, to minor
and immaterial ones. We know, for
instance. that California gets most of
the tourists that come to the coast and
wants to keep them; that her entice-
ments are innumerable; that her hotel
keepers warn tourists away from here
by telling them that we have fearsome
diseases and Martinique volcanoes;
they dwell upon the long ocean trip"
and the high price of passage; they
talk vaguely of "quarantines' and in
nine cases out of ten they hold their
men. Obstacles like these are we'll
nigh insurmountable yet we go at them
with the cheerful hardihood of Don
CuiXote when he couched his spear at
the mill on the plain. But the minute
one speaks of settlers We must submit
to the cheap rejoinder that the public
lands have yet no roads and cannot be
settled until these highways are built. |
If that plea had sufficed on the main
land America would be a wilderness
today. But thank God it did not suf-
flee. The lands were opened at a low |
price and the pioneers rushed in to pos
sessI them telling giant trees as they !
went and building roads across the
burnt vestiges of the stumps. Here, it |
appears, our remarkable government |
would wait until macadamized roads
have been built and then, perhaps, let |
a few settlers in. Even that recourse
has not been taken yet. There are no
new roads starting and no visible pur-
pose to build any
Is il not astonishing? Here we have
tens of thousands of acres of suscepti-
Die land without a house on them; vast
ranch spaces given over to weeds and
antana; enormous leased estates where
fifteen acres are devoted to one COW;
an agricultural kingdom as large as
and only 100000 people in
t, nearly half of them Asatic and other
nomads. Here is a soil lying fallow,
capable of raising specialized export
crops and giving a farmer a good liv-
ing besides-and we let it lie. Main
land farmers importune the Govern
ment for land and get a non committal
pamphlet in reply; they ask Nor bread
and we give them a stone. Worse than
that, they ask to come and raise their
own bread and ours and we tell them
to keep off-that we prefer stones. Then
we send an ambassador to the coast to
ascertain If we can, by the spending
or much money, secure a fortnight's
visit, at reduced rates of entertainment,
for seventy-five knights Templar. As
he street boy remarked; Say! Amt
we beauts?"
We put the question: Is it not time
10 begin building up white population
N Hawaii as other parts of the Ameri-
,an West have done and take our
'hances with that rather than with the
.ew tourists whom California will ever
consent to let go of?