The mirror., 1922-12-14
THE AMERICAN EMPIRE
CONTINUED from page u

cCOHOIHlC strength. n rev OF the Drawer
spirits, risking all the money they had or
could borrow on the venture, proved that
making sugar would pay and began to
build the great plantations. They were
not rich men; they spent all the money
they had on experiments; they did not
know the trick of capitalizing good will or
of watering stock, and most of them would
have refused to do either if they had
known how. So when they had proved
that sugar could be made they turned to
the general public to finance the industry.
You hear talk of the sugar barons of
Hawaii, fabulously rich and greedy crea-
lures who sit in their magnificent planta-
ton houses and haul in their millions
year by year while the laborers, slaves to
all intents and purposes are starving.
Nothing could be more fantastically un-
true than such talk. There are no very
rich men in Hawaii. No plantations are
the property of individuals; the plantations
are all stock companies in which the stock
school teachers, clerks and laborers. Peo-
pie in Hawaii put their money into sugar
instead of into savings banks. Labor is
neither illtreated nor underpaid. 1t is
true that in the old days there was con-
tract labor, which was imported largely
from the Orient; but the proof that the
rrep xyera MT Dissatisfied &c tho foot +L,
they almost always renewed their con-
tracts for further period of years. The
system was abolished quarter of a CEN
tury ago. Since that time no community
has been more progressive than Hawaii in
its voluntary endeavor to improve the con-
dition of labor. The hours of labor in the
islands are reasonable; the workmen get
good wages and, in addition, free living
quarters, free medical attention, free water
and free fuel; if they are married they get
houses and land for garden and free
schooling for their children. A laborer
can save virtually his entire wage In
addition to those benefits all the planta-
tions have adopted the proft-sharing sys-
tenn, circumstance that means that in a
good year the resulting bonus may more
than double the wage.
Here then is an obvious duty that the
government has toward Hawaii: to build
up the great American sugar and pine
apple industries of the islands. Unless
the plantations can get labor they must
shrivel and die, and with their death the
prosperity of all the people of Hawaii,
land where few are poor and few are
rich, will be thing of the past. Unfor-
tunately, labor can be obtained in suffi-
cient quantity only from the Orient. "There
is unemployment in the United States"
cries American labor. "Help out these un-
willingly idle men by giving them work
on the plantations" The planters would
like nothing better than to have them, but
if American labor will not work in the
fields of the tropics, and it will not, must
the plantations therefore fail? That is
dog-in-the-manger policy unworthy If
Americans. The planters can get Oriental
labor, preferably Chinese labor because #
is dependable and honest 1t would not
compete with white labor, for white labor
is not available. 1t need not be allowed
to enter the continental labor market, where
it would compete with white labor, for
emigration from Honolulu to San Fran
cisco is as easily controlled as emigration
from Shanghai to San Francisco.
If possible the labor should be Chinese
rather than Japanese because, if the terri
tory must always have large proportion
of aliens,-as seems inevitable,-it is not
we'll politically or socially that the alien
population should be predominantly of one
race. The statement is made in no spirit
of criticism of the japanese, who now
constitute more than half of the population
of the islands. They have done much to
promote the general prosperity of the ter