Our Hawaii

by Charmian London

Hawaii is a great experimental laboratory, not merely in agriculture, but in ethnology and sociology. Remote in the heart of the Pacific, more hospitable to all forms of life than any other land, it has received an immigration of alien vegetable, insect, animal and human life more varied and giving rise to more complicated problems than any other land has received. And right intelligently and whole-heartedly have the people of Hawaii taken hold of these problems and striven to wrestle them to solution.

A melting pot or a smelting pot is what Hawaii is. In a single school, at one time I have observed scholars of as many as twenty-three different nationalities and mixed nationalities. First of all is the original Hawaiian stock of pure Polynesian. These were the people whom Captain Cook discovered, the first pioneers who voyaged in double canoes from the South Pacific and colonized Hawaii at what is estimated from their traditions as some fifteen hundred years ago. Next, from Captain Cook’s time to this day, has drifted in the haole, or Caucasian—Yankee, Scotch, Irish, English, Welsh, French, German, Scandinavian—every Caucasian country of Europe, and every Caucasian colony of the world has contributed its quota. And not least to be reckoned with, are the deliberate importations of unskilled labor for the purpose of working the sugar plantations. First of these was a heavy wave of Chinese coolies. But the Chinese Exclusion Act put a stop to their coming. In the same way, King Sugar has introduced definite migrations of Japanese, Koreans, Russians, Portuguese, Spanish, Porto Ricans, and Filipinos. With the exception of the Japanese, who are jealously exclusive in the matter of race, all these other races insist and persist in intermarrying, and the situation here should afford much valuable data for the ethnologist.

Of the original Hawaiians one thing is certain. They are doomed to extinction. Year by year the total number of the pure Hawaiians decreases. Marrying with the other races as they do, they could persist as hybrids, if—if fresh effusions of them came in from outside sources equivalent to such continued effusions as do come in of the other races. But no effusions of Polynesian come in nor have ever come in. Steadily, since Captain Cook’s time, they have faded away. To-day, the representatives of practically all the old chief-stocks and royal-stocks are half-whites, three-quarter whites, and seven-eighths whites. And they, and their children, continue to marry whites, or seven-eighths and three-quarters whites like themselves, so that the Hawaiian strain grows thinner and thinner against the day when it will vanish in thin air. All of which is a pity, for the world can ill afford to lose so splendid and lovable a race.

And yet, in this period of world war wherein the United States finds it necessary to prepare against foes that may at any time launch against it out of the heart of civilization, little Hawaii, with its hotch potch of races, is making a better demonstration than the United States.

The National Guard has been so thoroughly reorganized, livened up, and recruited that it makes a showing second to none on the Mainland, while, in proportion to population, it has more of this volunteer soldiery than any of the forty-eight states and territories in the United States. In addition to the mixed companies, there are entire companies of Hawaiians, Portuguese, Chinese (Hawaii-born), and Filipinos; and the reviewing stand sits up and takes notice when it casts its eyes over them and over the regulars.

(1) The Peninsula. (2) The Hobron Bungalow. (3) The Snark, and the owner ashore.

No better opportunity could be found for observing this medley of all the human world than that afforded by the Mid-Pacific Carnival last February when the population turned out and held festival for a week. Nowhere within the territory of the United States could so exotic a spectacle be witnessed. And unforgettable were the flower-garlanded Hawaiians, the women pa’u riders on their lively steeds with flowing costumes that swept the ground, toddling Japanese boys and girls, lantern processions straight out of old Japan, colossal dragons from the Flowery Empire, and Chinese school girls, parading two by two in long winding columns, bare-headed, their demure black braids down their backs, slimly graceful in the white costumes of their foremothers. At the same time, while the streets stormed with confetti and serpentines tossed by the laughing races of all the world, in the throne room of the old palace (now the Executive Building) was occurring an event as bizarre in its own way and equally impressive. Here, side by side, the two high representatives of the old order and the new held reception. Seated, was the aged Queen Liliuokalani, the last reigning sovereign of Hawaii; standing beside her was Lucius E. Pinkham, New England born, the Governor of Hawaii. A quarter of a century before, his brothers had dispossessed her of her kingdom; and quite a feather was it in his cap for him to have her beside him that night, for it was the first time in that quarter of a century that any one had succeeded in winning her from her seclusion to enter the throne-room. And about them, among brilliantly uniformed army and navy officers from generals and admirals down, moved judges and senators, sugar kings and captains of industry, the economic and political rulers of Hawaii, and many of them, they and their women, intermingled descendants of the old chief stocks and of the old missionary and merchant pioneers.

And what more meet than that in Hawaii, the true Aloha-land which has welcomed and loved all wayfarers from all other lands, that the Pan-Pacific movement should have originated. This had its inception in the mind of Mr. Alexander Hume Ford—he of Outrigger Club fame who resurrected the sports of surf-boarding and surf-canoeing at Waikiki. Hands-Around-the-Pacific, he calls the movement; and already these friendly hands are reaching out and clasping all the way from British Columbia to Panama, from New Zealand to Australia and Oceanica, and on to Java, the Philippines, China and Japan, and around and back again to Hawaii, the Cross-Roads of the Pacific and the logical heart and home and center of the movement.

Hawaii is a Paradise—and I can never cease proclaiming it; but I must append one word of qualification: Hawaii is a paradise for the well-to-do. It is not a paradise for the unskilled laborer from the mainland, nor for the person without capital from the mainland. The one great industry of the islands is sugar. The unskilled labor for the plantations is already here. Also, the white unskilled laborer, with a higher standard of living, cannot compete with coolie labor, and, further, the white laborer cannot and will not work in the canefields.