The Nonpartisan Leader Newspaper, June 2, 1919, Page 4

- - A L e -+t . - SRS U s U S ST SN RS American Minister in Poker Game With Kanaka King Won Footing in Islands for Big Interests—People Are Reduced to Serfdom The Sugar Trustin the Hawaiian Islands ‘~ The writer of the following article is now a member of the staff of the Grand Forks (N. D.) American. He formerly was with the Minnesota Leader. Mr. Fawcett has had wide experience on newspapers in the United States and for a long time was employed on a news- paper in Honolulu, T. H., where he had opportunity to watch the workings of the sugar trust, which completely dominates and virtually governs the islands. ? N BY HARVEY FAWCETT ;] UT in the Hawaiian islands, where poets picture the Kanaka strumming a ukulele and living a life of -indolent ease, thou- sands of native sugar farmers are trying to shake off the yoke of modern serfdom. They are not slaves in the most narrow A sense of the word, for the prac- tical slavery system failed when the white man first began to exploit the paradise of the Pacific more than half a century ago, but robbed of their lands by cunning white men who came in the guise of missionayies and-traders, these Hawaiians are now struggling to retain the last vestige of their earth-born rights from the greedy claws of the American sugar trust. ‘ Hawaii’s principal industry is sugar cane farm- ing. Pineapple growing is second, with coffee production a minor consideration. Originally . the kings owned most of the land on the island where Honolulu is situated, but thousands of natives were owners of tracts on the other four islands. y The German and the Englishman administered high-powered gin to the unsophisticated native and at the proper moment bought his lands for a song. The American, while often resorting to the same procedure, went after the native’s property in a far more skillful manner. He came in the guise of a tourist ) or as an official American government representative. Poor, weak and easy- going King Kaliokalani listened to his flattery and fell easy prey. “We will teach you how to play our great little game of poker,” said the American ambassador to the king of the monarchy of Hawaii. The king was delighted. As soon as he was able to get a pair of deuces, so the story goes, he bet a piece of land which the sugar trust now values at millions, and the ambassador of the great American- republic “called” with ~three of a kind. SUGAR TRUST HIRES KANAKAS FOR TOBACCO It wasn’t long before the royal properties were stripped from the king and deeded in the names of Americans. Then the sugar trust got into action. It promised tobacco and gin to the natives in return for their labor in the sugar fields. While the * Hawaiian was full of gin he listened, but when he sobered up and realized - what a poor fool he was, he laid down his sickle and went home to his “grass” hut. He fished for his meat and he dug out the native A “vegetable, tara, and made his poi for food and he lived on the shores of the islands. The sugar trust, thus bereft of their slaves, sent modern “blackbirding” expeditions to the interior of China. There they enlisted thou- sands of native Chinese for labor in the Ha- waiian sugar fields at wages ranging from 25 to 50 cents a day and board, consisting mostly of rice and Chinese foods costing less than 25 cents a day for each man. The Chinaman brought leprosy with him, and the white man brought tuberculosis, and between the two the Hawaiian race of more than 200,000 people 50 years ago is today less than 25,000. ' Then the Americans, finding that they could mot ‘“de- . pend” on the more wise Queen Lilioukalani, who succeeded the lamentable Kaliokalani, decided on « a revolution. - > They never fired a bullet, but they marched the . queen at the points of bayonets to jail while they stripped he; of her royal properties and set up a il 1) Top—A' Hawaiian sugar 'mill, owned by the sugar trust. Bottom—An irri- gation ditch, blasted through solid rock, on one of the sugar ‘trust’s plantations.. The cost of building this ditch was $2,500,000. so-called republic in which no one had a voice in the government but the exploiters and their agents. It was while in jail that the queen wrote the im- mortal song, “Aloha Oe,” translated into “Fare- well to Thee.” During the chaotic period just preceding the ‘Spanish-American war, the dictators of the Ha- waiian republic feared for their holdings, and they appealed to the American government to take the islands as a territory. This was done, and forth- with the sugar trust was deprived of its source of labor. The anti-Chinese immigration law made it necessary for the trust to look elsewhere. They turned to Portugal and brought over many to work cheaply. But the Portuguese were a fail- ure on the plantations. They had reached too high a point- of civilization, so the “blackbirders” went to Japan. They brought thousands and thousands of Japanese, so many, in fact, that today more than half the population of the islands is Japanese and they still dress in their native Japanese cos- tumes. s % The United States at this juncture ‘enacted the law barring the big employers from\ going to for- eign countries for contract 18bor. This forced. the sugar trust to abandon Japanese importation. The Philippines,~being an American *possession and therefore immune from the anti-contract immigra- tion labor }aw, offered a labor field to the trust. Since that time the' sugar interests have been bringing thousands of Filipinos from the interior of the principal Philippine islands and from the isolated islands of that group. When the Umited States gives-the Filipinos independence, it will be hard ‘to say where the trust will look for cheap ‘1abor. But to get back to the original point’ of the story—the present fight of the small planters against the sugar trust. The exploiters have absorbed virtually all of the five islands except Maui and the island of Hawaii. The latter is _.the largest island of the group. - . On these two islands, Maui .and Hawaii, ‘thou- sands of natives have retained small tracts of from . one to five acres of land and hold them despite all ~ efforts of the trust to oust them and get possession, SPAGE. POUR... o L half white. - islands, Sugar cane must be milled before it is ready to be refined for table use. The steamships carry- ing sugar cane to the refineries in the islands are dominated by the sugar trust. They will not carry unmilled sugar cane. All the big plantations are owned by the exploiters and have mills, A sugar mill costs many thousands of dollars, and of course the small planter can not build a mill, so he must sell his raw product to the bigger planters. , TRUST ABSORBING SMALL FARMS BY UNDERPAYING The trust figures what it costs the big planta- tion to produce its own cane. It subtracts from this figure anywhere from 10 to 20 per cent and pays the small farmer the difference. Thus, un- less the small planter can produce cane cheaper than the big scientific plantation corporation, he loses financially. Never does he get more than barely enough to subsist. The result is that each year the trust absorbs many of these small plan- tations and the natives are forced to leave ‘their homes. . Four years ago a fearless man from the island of Hawaii was elected speaker of the house of representatives of the Hawaiian legislature. His name was Holstein and he was half Hawaiian and - Holstein started a legislative inves- tigation of the sugar trust’s system in opposing the small planter. After the trickery and domineering of the trust had been well exposed, the exploiters brought pressure to bear on the investigating committee and the ultimate result was that the whole affair was hushed up and never came to any definite resuit. Both daily newspapers in the islands are owned by white men, who also are: ‘principals in the sugar group, bank- ers, landowners, etc. The only news- B paper printed in the Hawaiian lan- guage, a weekly, is published by one: of these daily newspapers. Thus the news is well censored before it reaches the reader. . . Incidentally, a group of five con-. cerns controls the ‘entire business and mercantile industry of the islands. As an example of their methods, one can not buy an ordinary “parlor” . match in the islands because one of these five concerns handles the insur- ance business, and out of respect to that firm, the others will import noth- ing but so-called safety matches. The stock in these five companies is owned by sugar magnates. The same sinister feature creeps out in other industries in the islands. Every store is owned by the sugar trust, and any person who ever at- tempts to fight the trust finds these stores closed to his trade. No white man is permitted to work at any task in the islands at which native, labor is employed. The “dig- nity of the white man” is rigidly up- held by the sugar magnates, who pre- fer to see a white man starve in dignity than live at manual labor. This prevents also any attempts to expose the trust methods toward labor. A’detec- tive' who came from the United States to.inves- tigate labor conditions on the island attempted to obtain a position as a dock laborer. *This .request was refused in horror, as was another request for - a position in the offices of the shipping company. ;I‘hetshipping concern is a subsidiary of the sugar rust. R "The islands, politically, economically and' indus- trlglly are under the thumb of the sugar trust, Whlf!h mpintains a modern feudal system, with the " natives in worse straits than were ever the serfs of the feudal barons of the middle ages. - The ‘pineapple industry is controlled in virtu- ally the same Wway as the. sugar business, only- to offset the military influence of ‘the 100,000 Japa- nese sugar workers, the principal pineapple com- pany employs a few thousand Koreans. - ‘The Ko-: reans hate the Japanese, and they are drilled in military tactics by their employers, using wooden guns. The ‘real guns, however, are ready for A8 use, stored in United States army forts on the =