The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1907-12-01

The planters with more or less spas
modic energy searched for laborers
elsewhere. Naturally they secured
! them along the lines of least resistance
Chinese were easier to obtain; their
wages were low, and there was an I'M
limited supply of them. South Sea Is
landers were comparatively near at
hand, and, although less efficient than
. Chinese, offered desira Bile divergence
of nationality. The rising tide of pop
ular opposition to increased Chinese
immigration compelled resort, from
1888 to 1887, to European sources, but
the outlay involved soon checked this
source of supply: and, although in con-
nection Herewith the agitation for set
Element of the people upon the land
was increased. by this time the planta-
ton system had become so entrenched
that efforts in this direction languish-
ed. Then Japan was opened as a source
of labor supply, and the numbers
available and the low cost of obtain
ing them stin more solicited the
strength of the system.
Beginning in 1888, and continuing
with more or less activity, the so-called
homesteading system has been carried
out by the successive governments of
Hawaii; but, one is told, most of the
lands SO homesteaded have been re-
mote from sugar mills; the homestead
ers mostly without adequate means to
establish mills of their own, and with
out education and administrative abil-
ity enough successfully to combine
sugar-raising on any cooperative
basis. The local market for farm
produce is limited, and markets for
money crops for export abroad are not
yet generally established. The small
homesteader. needing the moral sup
port of his powerful neighbors, seldom
gets it.
MR.. THURSTON'S VIEWS.
L. A. Thurston tells me: There are
exceptions. Some plantations for years
bought cane from small planters;
some plantations have from time to
time farmed out portions of their lands
to planters on shares. In the main,
however, the policy of the plantations
has not been favorable to small plant
ers, and so far as permitting laborers
to own their own homes, such a thing
has been practically unthought of.
There may be instances which have
not come to my attention, but in thirty
years of intimate acquaintance with
the sugar planters and plantations of
Hawaii 1 have never known of a plan
tation selling or giving land to labor
ers in its employ for homesteads or
any other purposes. True, on some
some laborers have occu-
pied certain houses for long periods, but
always as tenants al will.
$50 long as an abundant supply of
labor was available, or the supply was
under control, there was
no serious thought of, or from the
viewpoint of its advocates, any neces-
sity for, changing the plantation sys-
tenn. But the conditions until recently
prevailing, under which this system |
was possible, have passed; and the
system is itself passing. The RESPONSE |
Oility is, in part, upon each one of |
is to say what shall take its place. /
Chinese are no longer available. South I
Sea islanders were never efficient, will I
lot work without the spur of a con-
ract, and can no longer be had I'm
il recently the japanese who came to
Hawaii remained here until they We're
eady to go home; but within the two
r three years last past, although COM
ng here in large numbers. they are /
making Hawaii but a stepping stone
o pass on to the mainland of the
United States. They are not only do
ng this, but the impetus caused by
heir numerous departures is drawing
1to their train thousands of japanese
reviously resident in Hawaii. The
Korean immigration has been pre-
arious and uncertain, and they do not
lake especially good laborers. AL
1ough there were number of good
lborers among the Porto Rican inmi-
rants, the large percentage of crimi-
al and degraded characters among
lem has placed that immigration un-
er a cloud. Morally and socially they
re at the foot Of the ladder in Hawaii,
$ compared with immigrants of other .
HAWAII'S CHIEF PROBLEM.
This. then, is the chief problem con-