The Barre daily times. (Barre, Vt.) 1897-1959, 1911-12-18
MAGAZINE REVIEW
The Real Rulers Of Hawaii.

Ray Stannard Baker begins series
of articles entitled Wonderful Hawai-
"A World Experiment Station" IN the
December American Magazine. He shows
how the land of Hawaii has fallen into
the hands of few people, and then goes
on TO demonstrate in an interesting man
ner how these owners of the land rule
the country Following is an extract:
1T is difficult for an outsider to form
any adequate conception of the extent
to which a feudal aristocracy, dominat-
ing the land, can direct or influence even
in remote details the life, the income,
the politics, the education and even the
religion of the country. Not only does
the plantation manager dominate the
actual work on his own plantation but
his domination extends TO all the people
who live around the plantation to all
the little settlements and to all the
small groups Of homesteaders and small
farmers near about. And being in most
instances an employee himself, with his
own success dependent on making diyi-
dends for distant stockholders, it may
be imagined how thoroughly he turns
all his power to advantage with yearly
profits in view.
"Let me illustrate: Many of the plan
tations have built wharves or landings
in front of their mills and here yes
sells stop and discharge their freight.
Some of this freight is ordered by the
small merchants and independent home
steaders.
"The plantation fixes scale of
charges for landing goods from the yes
sells TO the wharf. have before me
list of the landing charges of the
Honokaa Sugar company. For lifting
one barrel of cement, twenty cents;
bag of grain, ten cents; barrel of wills
key, $3.50; a bicycle, fifty cents; a sew
ing machine, Sl.00; and so on.
Let us see how this works out in
the case of a ton of barley shipped from
San Francisco to Honokaa. The freight
from San Francisco to Hilo, over 2500
miles, Is $275 ton. There is still
ocean competition from San Francisco.
But at Hilo competition ends. All the
inter-island shipping is practically mo-
nopolized by the Inter-lsland Steamship
company, owned and controlled by the
same interests as the plantations
enormously profitable company.
when the ton of barley gets to Hilo,
then, it is taken by the Inter-Island
Steamship company and pays S. freight
for a trip of sixty miles to Honokaa.
II paid 1915 for over $500 miles from
San Francisco nearly twice as
much for sixty miles to Honokaa Here
it is landed on the private wharf of
the plantation corporation at ten cents
a bag or So for ton.
But the profit in such devices as
these is not, after all, the main thing.
The power, the control, which il gives
the plantation corporation over all the
people of the community; over the la
borers, over the merchants, over the yot-
ers- that is the main thing.
1T enables them to dictate largely
who shall thrive and who shall not, it
enables them to discipline the unruly
voter and crowd out any man who does
not submit. But more than this, it in
creases very materially the cost of liv-
ing to the people. They have to pay
more for all sorts of imported food,
horse feed, machinery everything they
use. II is another way by which the
controlling financial interests tax all the
people"