Hawaii Holomua, Volume II, Number 38, 1 November 1894 — ANOTHER TRUST. [ARTICLE]

ANOTHER TRUST,

A HUGE CORRUPTION FUND. The Latest Scheme of the Sugar Barons. Our leading planters, or at least a coterie of them, have been persuing a still hunt, with the object of forming all our sugar planting corporations and individual planters into a huge Sugar Trust, under the name of the Hawaiian Sugar Planters' Association. It is proposed to assess each member of the trust $1.00 per ton per year of its sugar output, for a period of years, with a provision for raising the tax to $2.00 per ton. The fund thus raised is to be placed in the hands of nine "Trustees," to be by them “invested" in their discretion, "for the protection of the planting interests of the members of the association," which in plain English, means, that the assessments will constitute a huge corruption fund, to be placed where it will “do the most good,” in the maintenance of lobbies in Congress, the sub sidizing of newspapers, the suborning of officials, and other projects best known to our planter purists. Each subscribing producer of sugar obliges himself or itself to dispose of his or its crop, during ten years, only as instructed or permitted by the Trust. There are some vague suggestions of the purchase or building of a refinery thrown in by way as moral floaters, to facilitate the flouting of the pretty scheme, but the open and obvious purpose of the deal is the collection of a corruption fund, and the corralling of the sugar crop where the Trust can levey blackmail upon the producers before allowing the owners to sell their product. Very nice, and very sweet, and, as usual, with such nefarious plots in Hawaii, it is being engineered by some of the holy deacons of Central Union Church. The small stockholders will, if this plot succeeds, see the money that should come to them in dividends, diverted into the hands of the Trust, for use in their most peculiar and moral ways. More later.