Ka Leo o ka Lahui, Volume II, Number 182, 29 April 1891 — A POLICY FOR DISCONTENT [ARTICLE]

A POLICY FOR DISCONTENT

The People of this country are expected by a section of the press, to delude themselves into the belief that they are enjoying representative constitutional government. We say the effort would be altogether super-human, and presumes the presence of a mass of ignorance which does not exist. Look at our immigration policy alone. The planting interest was influential, and had bribing power enough in the last Legislature to scoop in for its own sole benefit every dollar of the immigration vote, and for all practical purposes the Planters Labor and Supply Co. now decides, whether the country shall be filled up with Chinese or Japanese or East Indians from Goa, or Hottentots from Africa. Does any intelligent man require to be told that this combination of planters controlling the very foundation upon which the existence of our prosperity, nay, our very identity as a people depends, is an imperium in inperio, which is utterly repugnant to all idea of government by the People, of the people, and for the people? All that the planters are in search is cheap labor, which generally of, means the most shiftless class from the various lands on which the Hawaiian recruiting agent sounds his drum. Everything to assure the downfall of the people already in the country is imported with the new comers. The Japs just now are the fashion, and the consequence is that the Jap is supplanting the Portuguese who is trying to bring up his family in civilized fashion; as for the Hawaiians he is long since crowded out of plantation work. Next, we may have the Goite brought along in such numbers, by the Earl cf Honokaa, and find that they will "go" one better in the decline of pay and thereby partially or wholly supplant the Jap; anyhow they will at least add another shade to our kalaidescopic motley population, and we may yet further, in our search after finality, discover some tribe of earthmen from equitorial Africa who will live on grass. Anyho,w whether it be Jap, or African, or East Indian, or any other tribe or nation of the planters selection, which comes out on top in the general scramble for existence; one thing is certain, that the present manner of working the immigration oracle is proving destructive to the existence here of people of European or American birth or descent. Already the whitemen retailers on the islands are passing away, and in another year it will be a curiosity to find an American or European storekeeper outside of Honolulu (and few even there) who is not attached to, or supported by the power of the plantation to coerce its laborers—a common practice—to buy at that store. One of the stock arguments in favor of the treaty on its first presentation to the United States Senate, was the employment it would afford to Americans, and for years a large number of American found employment as plowmen, teamsters, and in other labor capacities where scarcely one is employed to-day. In fact the reduction in the number of Americans and Europeans on plantations has gone or steadily

during the last six or eight years, until at the date of the last legislative report, March, 1890, the total number of Americans employed on plantations went down to 101, whilst the total number of American, British, and French—the three protecting powers—employed on plantations are set down at 181 out of a total of 20,000. Does it require any argument to prove that with the combined Japanese and Chinese population on plantations now increased to over 80 per cent that the American storekeeper "must go"? And that as a consequence they gone, into bankruptcy, and more will follow. Does it not become a burning question of which shall go — civilization or sugar?'