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 in Homo
lulu todav-thosc barracks of buildings west Of
Nuuanu stream, particularly-and you will see the
most acute condition of overcrowding since the
tenements became a fixed blot on Honolulu
escutcheon.
Hundreds upon hundreds Of plantation workers
have come to the city during the past month WIN
their bonus money Many Of them expected 10 take
passage for the coast and have been unahl" TO get
accommodations Others drifted here with the nat
ural impulse of their kind to "ay Off for good
time when they were flush with prosperity.
Into the midst Of some of Honolulus foulest dens
of disease vice and potential crime there have oeen
thrust scores of families with girls from babEhood
to twenty wears Of age. Fresh from the pIantatlons'
where they lived in clean orderly, industrious COM
mnnties, these young girls are exposed TO Danger
that is obvious to the most casual observer OF
present-day conditions Some of these tenement
houses are swarming with single men, most OF them
idle Night and day there is drinking, carousing,
the loosinG of bestial passion. To put girls from
the plantations into such neutrality-suspicious.
" at time when the famiy's scant treasury Is
RAPIDLY being depleted when the father is idle when
home ties have been broken, when presently time
will come when money must be had-to put these
girls into such environment is as merciless as to
thrust lamb into a den of wolves. The result may
be just as surely prophesied.
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.
Il ham Wit
of from six to ten
In the line of more permanent action, there are
suggestions to segregae the sexes to require each
tenement to employ janitor and general watch
man who will see that the premises are kept morally
clean to legislate against overcrowding; and ulti
mately, to destroy these great barns of poverty,
hlth disease and vice and to establish, so far as
possible, the 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 rapid rate. It is true that the
board of health by persistent campaigning has car
ried out a 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
Eve 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 ="' "-..