Year: 1877

THE Reciprocity Treaty has, as was anti
cipated, given 4 great impetus to agricultural
enterprise throughout the country, and espe-
cially to the cultivation of sugar-cane. New
plantations have been started on all the larger
islands, and moro are projected. Notwith-
standing the fact that many of the old and
well established plantations are already
seriously crippled by being short-handed, and
unable to extend their operations as their
owners would like, schemes for new ones are
pursued with as much confidence as if laborers
were thronging the country and suing for
work. Laborers now can only be obtained by
the payment of extravagant advances, and
wages have about reached that limit to exceed
which would be equivalent TO an abandon
ment of sugar culture We can assert, with
out fear of contradiction, that no other sugar
growing country in the world, except it be in
the United States, has to pay anything like as
much for labor as we do in Hawaii ne


The demand for labor being so much in ex-
cess of the local supply, it is natural that
planters should took beyond the bounds of this
little Kingdom to make up their deficiency.
Laborers will be procured from any of the
ports of the Pacific where they can be OBJ
tanned the most cheaply and readily. But
there is this insSperable objection TO this
work being undertaken by private enterprise,
viz that only males will be brought, thus
increasing the existing lamentable disparity
between the sexes. If women are brought
into the country, it will be in behalf of a
broader and Horc farseeing policy than can
be expected from private individuals, intent
only on their own personal emolument. II
must be done by the Government. Several
orders have already been sent TO San Fran
cisco for laborers for different plantations, and
several hundred men are expected down soon.
Thus will the unnatural and pernicious exist
ing state of things be increased and aggra-
waited, and il is TO be feared that if prompt and
decisive steps be not taken to apply remedy,
that results will shortly ensue which will
cause the cars of the civilized world TO tingle
Three years ago Walter NJ. Gibson, Esq,
Secretary Of the Hawaiian Immigration So
ciety, called attention TO this matter in the
following language: According to the cen
sus of 1872 there are 6,4O3 males in excess OF
females, in a population of 56,s97 souls
With such a disproportion of sex, which
would be regarded as a deplorable state Of
society among the most enlightened and vir-
tuous races in the world, what must be its re-
suits with race whose standard of virtue
must still be depressed by the Influences o.
its former savagcry? This sad deficiency o.
the weaker sex among a people unframed to
habits of confluence, must unquestionably
lead to results morally and physically deplor-
able, and which must be disastrous in the ex.
treme TO any future increase of the Hawaiian
race"


The disproportion of sex exhibited byTht
census of five years ago has no doubt beer
very much increased since that time. Thought
full observers in many of the country districts
in the neighborhood of large plantations de
clare the state of society among the laborins
class to be already horrible and evils of thi
nature, if permitted to continue, are certain Il
grow larger in an ever increasing ratio. A
the proportion of the female sex diminishes
the shorter will become the average of lif
among the survivors.


This is matter in which Nature is power
less to act, and in which Commercial Interest,"
as the world goes are too selfish and too mucl
concerned with the present to be expected +
render any assistance. If anything is to b
done to save the country from the peril whicl
threatens us-to avert the black storm-clout
of ruin which hangs over us, the Government
alone can do it. Hawaii awaits with anxiet,
Cor the first step.


The Situation In Europe.