The Pacific commercial advertiser. [volume] (Honolulu, Hawaiian Islands) 1885-1921, 1909-11-10
SECOND CALL
FROM HAWAII
New York Suns Characteristic
Comments on Situation
in Islands.

New York Sun-This is a small cen
tennial Just 100 years ago Opukahala
came sailing out of Owhyhee with Cap
tain Brintnall and landed in New York.
Jack ashore, he went to a show-fright-
fully immoral places those theaters IN
1909. His pious biographer never tires
of diseoursing upon the iniquity OF tax
ing a poor benighted heather, wor-
shipper of wooden idols, and eorrupting
him with stage plays. Opukahaia is
next found in New Haven. We see him
grovehng on the threshold of Yale Col
lege, lifting his voice in ceremonial
wall because he knew nothing at all
in the presence of so many sophomores.
Just about here his name is raced.
Opukahaia had a scandalous riot of rich
and wicked vowels; New England cut
him down to Obookiah. 1t did worse,
it converted the savage, and in token
of his regeneration baptized him Jere-
miah; Jeremiah Obookiah-it scans, 1t
should be set in two lines, an occasional
distich Opukahaia served well his lit
tie end; out of him grew great the A.
B. c. f. NJ, the mission career conse'
Grated under the haystaek at Williams
town, the kingdom, the republic, the
territory of Hawaii.
One hundred years ago and that was
Hawaii s first call, the call to the Uni
ted States to establish the work of
civilization. When we measure the hel-
aus upon the Hawaiian mountains, mas
sive temples for the worship of great
people now a pitiful remnant, we may
somewhat doubt that the work was
really well done. The old gods are
gone; there are taboos no longer, but
the people is well nigh spent.
That is why the century brings the
second call from Hawaii. In few
days the territorial legislature is to
consider such amendment to the Or
ganic Act as will encourage new set
tiers to come to the eight islands. The
land laws are to be adjusted to the
homestead system, eighty acres to each
settler by lottery. A century since
Opukahaia, and the new rulers of his
land are devising ways and means to
populate the acres which in his time
were filed with plantations from the
sea to the verge of the blazing noun
tain top.
ploitation for the broad industries. At
first it was a great range for cattle.
Then came the sugar industry, an in
vestment which has continued in the
records of prosperity the names of
many who first came to the island In
the self sacrifice of missionary zeal,
not wholly an agreeable thought to
dwell upon in the history of the de-
velopment of the Hawaiian resources.
A dozen years ago there was a boom
in coffee; in ignorance of economic
conditions it was overdone, yet the
Kona coffee of Hawaii, the island. is
as fine a coffee as ever smoked in cup.
There is room in Hawaii for the
small settler, and there is rich promise
of abundant profit. But an ignorant
boom viii be fatal. Much of the land
which will be thrown open for home
stead settlement is barren rock and
CONCEALED torrent of lava flow Much
of the good soil still unoccupied is on
the leeward TANKS of towering noun
tains; it remains public land for the
reason that no drop of rain falls upon
it. Yet despite these drawbacks to the
distribution of the land by the hazard
of lottery. there is room for large
influx of new settlement upon soil
where industry viii yield a rich re-
turn and in a climate unmatchable in
its perfection.
Hawaii s second call to the United
States will surely receive even more
attention than that which Opukahaia
uttered just a century ago.