Our Hawaii

by Charmian London

For the person without capital, dreaming to start on a shoestring and become a capitalist, Hawaii is the last place in the world. It must be remembered that Hawaii is very old... comparatively. When California was a huge cattle ranch for hides and tallow (the meat being left where it was skinned), Hawaii was publishing newspapers and boasting schools of higher learning. During the early years of the gold rush, before the soil of California was scratched with a plow, Hawaii kept a fleet of ships busy carrying her wheat, and flour, and potatoes to California, while California was sending her children down to Hawaii to be educated. The shoestring days are past. The land and industries of Hawaii are owned by old families and large corporations, and Hawaii is only so large.

But the homesteader may object, saying that he has read the reports of the millions of acres of government land in Hawaii which are his for the homesteading. But he must remember that the vastly larger portion of this government land is naked lava rock and not worth ten cents a square mile to a homesteader, and that much of the remaining land, while rich in soil values, is worthless because it is without water. The small portion of good government land is leased by the plantations. Of course, when these leases expire, they may be homesteaded. It has been done in the past. But such homesteaders, after making good their titles, almost invariably sell out their holdings in fee simple to the plantations. There is a reason for it. There are various reasons for it.

Even the skilled laborer is needed only in small, definite numbers. Perhaps I cannot do better than quote the warning circulated by the Hawaiian Promotion Committee: “No American is advised to come here in search of employment unless he has some definite work in prospect, or means enough to maintain himself for some months and to launch into some enterprise. Clerical positions are well filled; common labor is largely performed by Japanese or native Hawaiians, and the ranks of skilled labor are also well supplied.”

For be it understood that Hawaii is patriarchal rather than democratic. Economically it is owned and operated in a fashion that is a combination of twentieth century, machine-civilization methods and of medieval feudal methods. Its rich lands, devoted to sugar, are farmed not merely as scientifically as any land is farmed anywhere in the world, but, if anything, more scientifically. The last word in machinery is vocal here, the last word in fertilizing and agronomy, and the last word in scientific expertness. In the employ of the Planters’ Association is a corps of scientific investigators who wage unceasing war on the insect and vegetable pests and who are on the travel in the remotest parts of the world recruiting and shipping to Hawaii insect and micro-organic allies for the war.

The Sugar Planters’ Association and the several sugar factors or financial agencies control sugar, and, since sugar is king, control the destiny and welfare of the Islands. And they are able to do this, under the peculiar conditions that obtain, far more efficiently than could it be done by the population of Hawaii were it a democratic commonwealth, which it essentially is not. Much of the stock in these corporations is owned in small lots by members of the small business and professional classes. The larger blocks are held by families who, earlier in the game, ran their small plantations for themselves, but who learned that they could not do it so well and so profitably as the corporations, which, with centralized management, could hire far better brains for the entire operation of the industry, from planting to marketing, than was possessed by the heads of the families. As a result, absentee ownership or landlordship has come about. Finding the work done better for them than they could do it themselves, they prefer to live in their Honolulu and seaside and mountain homes, to travel much, and to develop a cosmopolitanism and culture that never misses shocking the traveler or newcomer with surprise. All of which makes this class in Hawaii as cosmopolitan as any class to be found the world over. Of course, there are notable exceptions to this practice of absentee landlordism, and such men run their own plantations and corporations and are active as sugar factors and in the management of the Planters’ Association.

Yet will I dare to assert that no owning class on the mainland is so conscious of its social responsibility as is this owning class of Hawaii, and especially that portion of it which has descended out of the old missionary stock. Its charities, missions, social settlements, kindergartens, schools, hospitals, homes, and other philanthropic enterprises are many; its activities are unceasing; and some of its members contribute from twenty-five to fifty per cent of their incomes to the work for the general good.

But all the foregoing, it must be remembered, is not democratic nor communal, but is distinctly feudal. The coolie and peasant labor possesses no vote, while Hawaii is after all only a territory, its governor appointed by the President of the United States, its one delegate sitting in Congress at Washington but denied the right to vote in that body. Under such conditions, it is patent that the small class of large land-owners finds it not too difficult to control the small vote in local politics. Some of the large land-owners are Hawaiian or part Hawaiian, as are practically all the smaller land-owners. And these and the land-holding whites are knit together by a common interest, by social equality, and, in many cases, by the closer bonds of affection and blood relationship.

Interesting, even menacing, problems loom large for Hawaii in the not distant future. Let but one of these be considered, namely, the Japanese and citizenship. Granting that no Japanese immigrant can ever become naturalized, nevertheless remains the irrefragable law and fact that every male Japanese, Hawaii-born, by his birth is automatically a citizen of the United States. Since practically every other person in all Hawaii is Japanese, it is merely a matter of time when the Hawaii-born Japanese vote will not only be larger than any other Hawaiian vote, but will be practically equal to all other votes combined. When such time comes, it looks as if the Japanese will have the dominant say in local politics. If Hawaii should get statehood, a Japanese governor of the State of Hawaii would be not merely probable but very possible.

One feasible way out of the foregoing predicament would be never to strive for statehood but to accept a commission government, said commission to be appointed by the federal government. Yet would remain the question of control in local politics. The Japanese do not fuse any more than do they marry out of their race. The total vote other than Japanese is split into the two old parties. The Japanese would constitute a solid Japanese party capable of out-voting either the Republican or Democratic parties. In the meantime the Hawaii-born Japanese population grows and grows. In passing it may be significantly noted that while the Chinese, Filipinos, and Portuguese flock enthusiastically into the National Guard, the Japanese do not.

But a truce to far troubles. This is my Hawaiian aloha—my love for Hawaii; and I cannot finish it without stating a dear hope for a degree of honor that may some day be mine before I die. I have had several degrees in the past of which I am well proud. When I had barely turned sixteen I was named Prince of the Oyster Pirates by my fellow pirates. Since they were all men-grown and a hard-bitten lot, and since the term was applied in anything but derision, my lad’s pride in it was justly great. Not long after, another mighty degree was given me by a shipping commissioner in San Francisco, who signed me on the ship’s articles as A.B. Think of it! Able-bodied! I was not a landlubber, nor an ordinary seaman, but an A.B.! An able-bodied seaman before the mast! No higher could one go—before the mast. And in those youthful days of romance and adventure I would rather have been an able-bodied seaman before the mast than a captain aft of it.