The way it all came about was this.
We have been telling you from week to week about the angry feeling that has been growing between Hawaii and Japan.
Last week we told you how threatening the Japanese Minister had become, and that he hinted that diplomatic relations between the two countries would be severed.
The Hawaiian Government became very much alarmed at this, and the two gentlemen who had been sent to the United States to try and bring about the annexation were instructed to go once more to our Government and beg that something be done before it was too late.
Annexing means joining to. You know what an annex to a house is—that it is a few extra rooms built beside the house, and joined permanently to it. When one country annexes another it makes it part of itself. The new lands are permanently joined to the old, and are regarded as a part of the whole.
President McKinley has expressed himself as in favor of annexing Hawaii, and has been considering the matter for some time. He did not wish that anything should interfere with the Tariff Bill, and for this reason kept Hawaiian matters in the background, along with Cuban affairs, until the Tariff question should be settled.
The trouble with Japan has forced him to consider Hawaiian Annexation before he intended to, and so the treaty has been drawn up.
He is more willing to give the matter his attention at the present time, because he finds that Hawaiian affairs are really delaying the Tariff Bill.
A great deal of our sugar is imported from the Hawaiian Islands, and under a commercial treaty made between Hawaii and the United States this sugar is brought into our country free of duty.