On Maui, Kauai and Hawaii skilfully engineered tunnels have brought down the water needed for sugar raising. On Oahu artesian wells have reached "the water of magic power."
We enjoyed an excursion to Judge Widemann's plantation of Waianae on Oahu. Here we saw a sugar-cane mill and wide meadows and brakes of the thick growth, and the whole process of the work—the crushing of the cane into molasses, the refining into sugar—and rode on the tiny plantation railway among the waving green stalks, while the blue sea sparkled on one side, and bare, gaily coloured mountains rose above us on the other.
"THE TINY PLANTATION RAILWAY AMONG THE WAVING GREEN STALKS."
Sugar raising in Hawaii probably furnishes the most perfect example of scientific agriculture to be found under the flag of the United States. "Think of always plowing two feet deep," writes a friend, "and not having to wait for rain, but telephoning to the engineer to start the pumps—of knowing at the end of a crop just what elements and the amount of each have been taken from the soil—of searching the world for parasites to destroy the insect enemies of the cane—of collecting and recording the life history of all the insects found in countries bordering the Pacific and all the islands within its borders, so that when some new pest appears, its origin and characteristics will be known—of sending men out to wherever sugar-cane is grown, in order to study and record its diseases, and giving the planter coloured illustrations of symptoms, so that he may know them in advance of their arrival and be able to check the pest—of the skilful manipulation of the soil, so that there is a constant increase in the production."
In harvesting the cane a path is first opened through the jungle, then the men, armed with knives like butchers' cleavers, go in among the dense growth to cut the stalks. After they have "stripped" a field in this way, the cane must be sent to the mill within twenty-four hours, or the juice will ferment.
Here the Japanese women play their part—for, among the Japanese, the women as well as the men work on the plantations. They gather up the stalks, which are not very heavy but are decidedly unwieldy, and if the field is on high land take them to wooden flumes through which water is run from the irrigation ditches. The women toss the great twelve-foot stalks into the rapid stream which carries them down to a loading place for cane-cars. Here the flume branches into five "fingers," at the head of which stands a man who opens one finger after another, until the cars standing under them are filled in turn.
Inside the cars are men who stack the cane as it tumbles in, so that each car carries a maximum load, laid in good order for the next process at the mill. Here, too, is an automatic "giant-hand" on an endless belt, the "fingers" of which, as it revolves, clutch the stalks of cane like jackstraws and pass them up to a wide belt that extracts every drop of juice so completely that the refuse is fit only for fuel for the furnaces. After the various processes of boiling down, evaporating, crystallizing and drying, the raw sugar is shoveled into gunny-sacks, which are filled to weigh exactly one hundred pounds each. Again the women take hold, and sew up the bags. The cost of raising and marketing sugar is from forty-five to seventy-five dollars a ton.
Japanese women who work on the sugar plantations may be seen sometimes knee-deep in muddy-watery soil near the flumes, or again out in the driest, hottest part of a newly plowed field. They have discarded their usual Japanese dress for a mixed costume, consisting of a close-fitting waist of dark, figured, Japanese cotton crêpe, a scant skirt to the knee, khaki gaiters, and their own heavy cotton "bootees." To protect their hair from dust and their necks from the sun, they wear a piece of Japanese toweling, which is tied across the back of the head and hangs down on the shoulders. On top of this is perched a cheap American sailor hat. The effect is certainly startling. Some take their tiny babies in bright-figured swaddling clothes with them, and put up a little shelter tent of cloth and sticks, where the youngsters lie and sleep.
Most of the women who do agricultural work are Japanese. A few years ago, when a ship-load of people came from Madeira, the women told the immigration authorities that they had come to work on the plantations. But, after a very short time, they retired from this sort of labour for the much pleasanter and more remunerative business of making Madeira embroidery. Among the Chinese the women rarely go out of their own homes to work, although Oriental servants prevail all over these Islands. Some of the younger generation of Portuguese girls go out as nursemaids in white families, but the majority of that race make sewing and dressmaking or "clerking" their means of support. It is surprising, indeed, to see how few of the employees in any store are "white"; bookkeepers, clerks, etc., are usually young part-Hawaiians or part-Chinese.