The Birmingham age-herald., 1912-03-10

of whom live on the islands, some in the | United States and not few in England and Germany. The corporations have an aggregate capital Of s150. .000.oo0 and they produce about $i0,000O00 worth of sugar a year Some of the plantations have de- clared dividends as high as per cent a month, while others have gone into bank fuptcy.
 The work of sugar raising Is scientific ally done. Enormous sums are spent for machinery and fertilizers. About half the land is irrigated and that at cost of Sl 10 per acre, or about four times as much as similar work in our country. The labor cost forms about 50 Der cent of the whole. Asiatics in Hawaii '+. | Tt Is this labor demand that has brought | the Asiatic to Hawaii. The invasion be- gan before we took possession of the is- lands and at first 1t was composed large | ly of Chinese. Since then the Chinese have been kept out by our exclusion law. | but the Japanese have taken their places, and we have now something like S0.000 of them there. We have perhaps 20,0O0 Chia- ese, 5o0o or 5000 Coreans and some Fill pinos.
 | As to the Japanese. there are three times | as many of them as of the native flaw | aians, and altogether they form from
 
 | ton.
 | So far these Orientals have been doing very little in voting, but their children will vote as they grow mp and the nu-s- tion is what effect it will have as to the | control of the government. As 1t is now the ruling class is the Hawaiian or the mixture of that and the American. Twenty out of 2S of the representatives belong to that race and they also form the majority of the Senate. The Hawaiians cast some- thing like 1000 votes at the last election, where as the American, British and Ger man element cast only q little over 5000 The Portuguese cast 2O00 votes, the Chin, ese 670 and the Japanese 53.
 The Hawaiian Islands, as every one knows. are now territory of the United States. They, rave a governor and a sec retary appointed by the President and these are aided by territorial legislature consisting of senate and house elected by the people. The legislature sits @ days only and the. last one passed 169 bills.
 Government Lands in Hawaii
 The Hawaiian Islands have not proved an Fl Dorado to pioneers from the United States as many expected. The truth is that they had already been developed by American brains and American enterprise. These came in with the missionaries and they have been so used that the best lands have been taken and the best places tiled.
 The government acquired about ,0o0O00 acres of public lands by the transfer. but great part of that was made up of can yons. ravines and lava clad mountains. The government had about one-third of the whole, but the greater part of thM third was no earthly good. It had abont 34.000 acres of good sugar lands. but much was leased to the sugar plantations and was therefore not to be disposed of until those leases ended A number of home steads were granted. but as a general thing these were small and those who got them have not made any great profit to speak of. Today Uncle Sam still offers homesteads, but the tracts are small and they are given at prices little less than their cash value. One thousand lots were taken in 1910 but since then other draw