The Maui news. [volume] (Wailuku, Maui, H.I.) 1900-current, 1905-01-28
PAST, PRESENT And
FUTURE OF MAUI
An Ideal Climate, Beautiful
Scenery, Good Soil and
Bright Prospects.


confining its scope to the limits OF
a newspaper article only hints and
prominent events can find space.
The history of Maui properly
begins with the landing of Kameha-
meha's warriors atHana Bay, and
the death struggle in lao Valley
where the flower of Maui's barbaric
but heroic chivalry bit the dust be-
meath the prowess of the Napoleon
of Hawaiian conquest. Prior to that
time, Maui had been rich in splen-
did traditions and beautiful legends,
many of which still exist and add
romantic interest to many spots
on Maui. But these traditions,
like the noble race which created
and preserved them, are slowly
passing away before the encroach-
ments of a higher and more ag-
gressive civilization.
Since the advent of christianity
and education, in the year 1920,
| Maui has kept pace with her sister
islands, and in the introduction of
material industries she has also
likewise kept pace. Sites for sugar
plantations were selected, and by
crude and primitive methods the
foundations for princely fortunes
were solidly laid, to be reaped
when reciprocity became fact in
1876 and received it's final supp le-
ment in 1887. Since then the sug-
ar industry on Maui has steadily
increa sed, subject only to the Incl
dental drawbacks common to all
the Islands, and today Maui is pre-
pared to export during each aver
age season approximately $4,000
tons of sugar, with possibility and
likelihood in the reasonably near
future of increasing this export to
100000 tons.
While sugar is now and probably
always will be the overshadowing
industry on Maui, still there are
many other mines of agricultural
wealth yet to be exploited and
developed. The sides of Ha1eaka-
Ia once teemed with fertile farms
which produced vast quantities of
cereals, potatoes and vegetables,
large exports of which went to
Cali But when California
began to produce her own crops
there ceased to be a market for
Maui productions, the farms were
abandoned or fell into the hands
of Chinese and other thriftless oul-
tivators, the former glory of Maui's
minor industries were forgotten,
SO that today it is a proverb in the
mouths of those who cannot or will
not look beyond the end of their
noses, that Maui is failure in
small farming. But once let there
a demand arise for our productions,
and the developments will be
startling.
With the passing away of mar
ket for minor products came the
overwhelming growth of the sugar
industry, which till now has occu-
pied the center of the stage. But
industry is aggressive, and the
thousands upon thousands of acres
of good land in Maui, not available
for sugar, are to be levied upon for
rich toll of what they will pro-
duce that is marketable. While
there is no hope of competing with
the mainland in the production of
temperate zone crops, still in many
directions there are opening op-
portunities for semi-tropic produc-
ton of agricultural wealth in the
growth of those things needed but
which cannot be grown in the tenn
perate zones of the old and new
worlds. There the market for
Maui's minor productions lie, and