Honolulu star-bulletin. [volume] (Honolulu [Oahu, Hawaii]) 1912-2010, 1917-12-18
HOtbeds OF Vice and Crime

Go into any one Of the tenement houses 10 Homo
lulu today--thor4. barracks Of buildings west OF
Nulanu stream. partcularly-and YOU will Sc" the
most acute condition Of overcrowding sine" the
tencments became fixed blot on Honolulu
Cscutchcon
Hundreds upon hundreds of plantation workers
have come 10 the city during the past month. with
their bonus MONEY!, Many Of them expected 10 take
passage for the coast. and have been unah" I" Got
accommodations Others drifted here with III" nat
uraI impulse of their kind LAY off for good
time when they flush with prosperity
into the midst Of some OF Honolulu's foulest dens
of disease, vice and potential crime there have been
thrust scores Of families with girls from bahyhood
to twenty Years Of age Fresh from the plantatlons
where they lived in clean. orderly, industrious com
munities, these young girls are exposed to danger
that is obvious to the most casual observer OF
present-dav conditions. Some of these tenement
houses are swarming with single men, most OF them
idle. Night and day there is drinking, carouslng'
; the lOosing Of bcstal passion. To put girls from
the plantations into such particular
~ at a time when the famlys scant treasury is
rapidly being depleted, when the father is idle when
home ties have been broken. when presently a time
will come when money must be had-to put these
girls into such environment is merciless as to
thrust lamb into den Of wolves. The result may
be just surely prOphesed.
There must be something done Immediately to
safeguard these families and there must be some
thing of more permanent nature done to get at
the tenement evil In the line of immediate action,
every social and moral agency should cooperate in
getting these families back to the plantations They
can't get to the coast because of lack of steamer
accommodations, and they can't remain here for
Honolulu is now full of idle men-single men.
There is little work here for these men with families
of from six to ten.
In the line of more permanent action, there are
suggestions to segregate the sexes to require each
tenement TO employ a janitor and general watch
man who will see that the premises kept morally
clean; to legslate against overcrowding; and, ult
mately, to destroy these great barns of poverty,
filth, disease and vice and to establish, so far as
possible, tae cottage system of housing.
There will be powerful objection to this as there
is to every attack, in every city, upon the tene-
ment evil The task may be harder in Honolulu
because most citizens here have gone along under
the comfortable belief that the tenements were be-
ing wiped out at a rapid rate 1t is true that the
board of health, by persistent campaigning, has
ried out noteworthy system of enforcing some
fundamental sanitary regulations, such as cement
flooring and drains, but there still remain block
after block of ramshackle edifces where men,
women and children are Jumped together, where
Ave or six men and two or three women occupy the
same room; where children grow up in an atmos
phere of nauseous moral degeneracy; where vice
and crime are fostered which cost the city ten times
what it would cost to clean up every tenement in
Honolulu.