The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1907-02-15
TWO VIEWS OF LANAI DEAL
In A NEW YORK NEWSPAPER
A Correspondent Who Objected to the Closing
of the Island to Small Farmers Replied
to by G. h. de la Vergne.

HONOLULU. January 16.-Territoria
Senator McCandless is making an eff
fort in the Hawaiian courts, with tn,
further recourse of an appeal to the
Federal Judiciary, to prevent the sale
| of Lanai, one of the eight islands OF
the Hawaiian group, to a private indi-
! vidual named Gay, a British subject
/ The proposed sale, which is being fur.
/ thered by Governor Carter, is disguised
as an exchange of properties, various
| lots in the city of Honolulu being Of
| fered for the island in lieu of cash. II
the deal is made, whatever the form OF
consideration may be, a valuable part
of the public domain, capable OF even
| tual settlement by the substantial
middle class which President Roose-
Welt wishes to establish in the feudal
environment of Hawaii, will have been
lost forever.
Lanai is the island fifth in size of
those which constitute the group. 1t
has an area of lbs square miles. About
80, 900 acres of this constitute the Ter
ritorial interest, the rest having been
sold to another British subject, w. G..
Irwin, a partner of Claus Spreckels.
Irwin win sell to Gay and Gay will
buy If he can put through his deal
with the Territory. Both men say that
Lanai is so deficient in water and her
bage that 1t could be of no value to
settlers save at vast outlay for re-
forestation and the impounding of
rain in some of the gulches. Gay, it
appears. if the island be given to him
in fee simple, would undertake to save
it. He says that unless he gets the
&c arU SOil will 1ifprallV
away in the trade winds, leaving moth
ing but the underpinning of rocks.
So eager is he to secure this barren
principaIity that he has appealed for
the help of native Hawaiians to silence
opposition, saying that his chief desire.
as owner of Lanai, would be to restore
the aboriginal customs there. He would
put natives on the island. encourage
them to live in grass houses, to go
without the white mans clothes and,
by keeping in touch with nature, try to
regain the vitality which they have
lost in contact with the pale-face.
Back of all this, however, is supposed
to be a baronial cattle scheme.
1t is this reactionary spirit that the
progressive people of Hawaii are hght-
ing. with some verbal encouragement
from Governor Carter. But the Gov
ernor cannot get away from the feudal
in which he was born and
His large fortune is chiefly in
vested in sugar and his basic attitude
toward the small land seeker is very /
much what that of Southern planter
Governor before the war must have i
been toward an ambitious poor white /
who wanted to take up farm near
an unfriendly cotton estate. Carter I
prefers to do what the planter rather
than the settler thinks desirable. Next
to the planter he ranks the cattle
baron.
The attitude is surprising when II is
seen that the soil a farmer would want
'or his specialized tropical agriculture
$ mostly above the sugar zone and
would not trench upon it in the least;
,ut any planter will tell you that the
armer by raising the price of land
eases above the nominal figure which
he sugar men pay and by drawing on
he coolie labor SUPPLY might so unset
lie the conditions which exist as to
make it impossible for the large pro-
,rietor to keep up his average scale OF
profits. And then there is natural