The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1908-09-23

that ever come TO these ISLANDS.
| learned that the japanese havt
been especially active in securing an(
exploiting hack licenses; they do no
cut the rates, but they are more wide
awake, work longer hours and naturally
secure more fares.
But no matter where I asked my
question: Glow do you like being ar
Americana the more or less favorable
reply served only as preface to an ex
preston of pro or anti japanese senti
ment. The Japanese question is the
| burning question in Hawaii today The
| big planters realize that their big profits
depend upon steady supply of cheap
| intelligent labor Such labor can be
had today only from Japan. Some plan.
ters have only praise for their Japan,
] csc toilers-others declare them sauey
! troublesome and unreliable, prone to
| organization and with a growing real,
lZatlon of their power. The day of
! labor troubles, strikes and walkouts is
not far off in the estimation of the
pessimists. According to them the only
safety for the future lies in the i'm
portatiOn of some competing labor of
another race. but where to get large
numbers of men who can and will work
as well as the Japanese, and for as
little money, is a question that no one
has answered yet. In Honolulu and the
Iother towns Japanese skilled labor is
supplanting white skilled labor The
carpenters and mechanics, builders and
rOOfers are today largely Japanese
Hundreds of white men who formerly
held these lucrative jobs have gone
back to the United States. In the re-
tail stores the clerks are brown, suave
Japanese--or in some eases Chinese,
without the shaven forehead and the
queue, looking at first glance amazing
ly like Japanese, though with gentler
manners and more perfect command of
the English language.
There are two Honolulu daily papers
printed in Japanese, and one japanese
daily printed on the neighboring island
of Kauai. There are japanese schools,
japanese Buddhist Missions. Japanese
hotels and two japanese clubs.
One of the most interesting phases
of life to study in Hawaii is to 90 to
school. In one school we visited were
bullet-headed little japanese with their
haIr close-cropped; young Celestials
with budding pigtails; red-haired,
freckled white boys; black haired,
oilve-cheeked Portuguese; and there
were fascinating little girls to match:
Japanese misses in American frocks.
Chinese demoiselles in brilliant, long
sleeved coats, with their little legs en-.
cased in loose, straight trousers adorn.
ed with gaudy decorative bands at
knee and ankle; and little girls with
dreamy eyes, bequeathed them bv faith
ers and mothers who came in the old
contract-labor days from Madeira or
the Azores.
There was one fiat-visaged, retiring
little lady of six years, from Korea,
and next to her bright-faced child,
half-native, half-Chinese, with the beau.
ty of Hawaii heightened and refined
by the old blood of the Middle King
dom, with the uncanny Oriental sharp
ness and intelligence of China modified
and broadened and made seemingly
more sympathetically human by the |
Polynesian strain. And there, in the |
same room with these brown, yellow, |
white and otherwise Completed" |
were children in whose |
veins flows the blood of even four or |
i've different races-children whose ma. |
5lonalty can be expressed only in frac-
5ions-one-eighth Hawaiian, one-eighth
Portuguese, One-quarter Chinese and |
'ne- half white. 1t is most confusing.
There is another school IN Honolulu
ooasting pupils of more than twenty
different nationalitesi We must not |
.orget that in Hawaii, growing up with
he brown majority of Orientals, there
s small but considerable white com
nunlty whose parents come from Ger
many, Denmark, Sweden, Norway, the
netherlands, Russia and other Europ-
an countries.
Thus the education problem is com
lex in Hawaii. Even the simpler prob
EN- of school discipline must be vex-
ng one. Think of the difficulty ex-
by the teachers in dealing
With so many little people of so many
Inherent races, so many differences of
Ome training, so many different ideals
f right and wrong, so many irreconeil-
Die ideas as TO what constitutes sim
lie justicei And if the situation is
rylng and confusing for the teachers,
hInk of the confusion that must reign
n the youthful minds of the Chinese
nd Japanese pupils; both attend their
|
ocular American public schools. Early
q the morning several hundred little
apanese-from four to twelve wears
ld-fock into the neat, severe class
ooms of the Hongwanji Buddhist Mis- !
ion to study and recite in the Japanese |
'ay with Japanese books and teachers.
hen after breakfast all must attend I
he mixed schools established by the {
'nited States government. and after q
ne long. regular sessions. the poor lit {
e Orientals return to finish the day I
the Buddhist Mission-being set free
My at five clock in the afternoon II
Tendance at the American public I
'hOols is compulsory.
X X * :
AS to the mode of living of the peo-
e. and the physical appearance of the
lands, great change has taken place.
4 only one of our walks could | find
ne of those grass huts-formerly the
,mmon abodes of the natives-now
zen only in the remote districts of the
her islands, or set up as curiosities in
e parks or private grounds here on /