The Hawaiian star. [volume] (Honolulu [Oahu]) 1893-1912, 1912-03-19

Hawaii will put in effect a scheme to
knock spots out of the federal regula-
ton against importing contract labor
The scheme has been experimental
with already and it works nicely, but
it can't be made a financial success
without the canal.
Ever since Oriental immigration
into the islands was stopped the
scarcity of cheap labor for the plan
tations has been bothering the insular
sugar interests nearly to death. This
scarcity has not only meant higher
wages than the big planters enjoy
paying, but it has rendered the work
ing classes entirely too independent
Why, the present situations is so
bad that some planters only make
twenty per cent profits and hardly any
of them earn to exceed 200 per cent!
Then, too, scientific foremen have
long recognized that plantation hands
need encouragement with a club oc-
casionally. There were foolish rules
d6dluSl IL SNGu uullll JhS SOOu Olu
days of unrestricted Oriental immi-
grafton, but few foremen paid much
attention to them.
Today the foreman who resorts to
anything stronger than moral sua-
sion is liable to have a strike on his
hands Under the conditions the big
planters hope will prevail after the
canal has been opened, it will be per-
fectly easy to fill the strikers places
and the strikers themselves can be
disciplined by being left to starve to
death.
With the opening of the canal,
>.southern Europe, by way of the 18TH
mus, will not be much farther away
from the islands than the Orient is,
and the experiments already made
have proved southern European plan
tation labor quite as satisfactory as
the Oriental kind.
True, Portuguese and Spanish field
hands cost from $22 to $24 apiece
monthly, as against the SIS paid to
the Japanese, but the planters argue
that these prices will slump as soon
as the Portuguese and Spanish begin
to swarm into the islands. Moreover,
the average Portuguese or Spaniard
is stronger and does considerable
more work in given time than the
average Japanese.
l. 81,
satisfactorily illiterate, ignorant of
his rights and accustomed to even
harder work, lower pay and worse
living at home than the planters con-
template for him. These qualifica-
lions will naturally tend to make him
content
The planters themselves will not
figure in the campaign for the impor-
ration of southern European laborers
If they did so they might get into
trouble with the United States gov
eminent They will raise the neces-
sary money for carrying on the work,
however, by means of what they eu-
phoniously term an income tax, and
turn it over to the territorial govern
ment to drum up the immigrants In
fact, few shiploads have already
been brought over to see if the
scheme works all right. 1t hasn't de-
veloped any weakness thus far, and
Governor Walter F. Frear, who is an
authority on such questions, says he
doesn't see how it is going to.
In the meantime The agents are
busy in Spain and Portugal, and by
the time the canal opens everything
will be in readiness for the starting
of whole fieetloads of laborers for the
plantations.
OF course, the agents are and will
continue to be careful not to make
their promises to their recruits too
specific They won't be engaged for
any specific jobs. They will merely
be assured, to a dead, absolute Ger.
tainty, that work is waiting for them
and then the agents will send them
along to hunt for it themselves-the
big planters being thoughtfully mott
fed to be on hand to take charge OF
them when they land in Honolulu.
Emphasis is laid on the fact thai
the immigrants may accept whatever
jobs they please when they go to the
islands, that they can change abou
to suit themselves, that they dom
have to work at all if they don't wan
to and that they can leave the Islands
whenever they get ready.
They do say, however, that in ac
tual practice it isn't easy for Ha
waiian plantation worker to get ava,
after a big planter has bought an
paid for him, as it is in theory
For instance, the agent for grou