Meanwhile Japan has agreed to arbitrate the immigration question, but refuses to consider the matter from the Hawaiian point of view.
The complaint which was made against Japan in the first instance was that she evaded the law which provided that every immigrant must have a contract for labor and fifty dollars in cash in his pocket, by giving false contracts and lending the required fifty dollars, which immigrants gave back as soon as they were safely landed.
The Japanese refuse to enter into the question whether this fifty dollars was fraudulently supplied. They say that so long as each man had fifty dollars in his possession, it was nobody's business where or how he got it. They persistently refuse to arbitrate this point, which seems to be the most important of all the questions involved.
The Japanese are continuing to send large numbers of emigrants to Honolulu, and the Hawaiians have become very much alarmed about it.
They insist that the new colonists are Japanese soldiers disguised as laborers, and that the Mikado is sending them over to be in readiness to fight for the possession of the country in case the United States decides to annex it.
The strike in Hazleton is now over, but the settlement has not been made without a good deal of trouble and anxiety.
When the state troops ordered out by the Governor arrived in the town, some of the men decided to go to work under the protection of the troops. The spirit of the strikers had been broken by the firing of the Sheriff and his posse, and many of the men who were peaceably inclined thought the best thing to do was to go back to work.
The women did not agree with them. The wives and mothers of the unfortunate men who had been killed declared that their dear ones should not have been sacrificed for nothing; and as the men refused to continue the strike, the women decided to go on with it for them.
A strike is of no use unless all the men stand together and hold out for their point. The women understood this perfectly, and they determined that the men should stand together.