Ka Leo o ka Lahui, Volume II, Number 277, 10 September 1891 — A SAMPLE. [ARTICLE]

A SAMPLE.

We have long persisted in the olaim that there is no sympathy for Libor, on the part of the sugar barons. We reiterate our oft-expres-aed belief that the wealthy moguls regard a workingmai T merely as a pieee of machinery whieh for a cash 00 nsideration, they are at 3iberty to use while they \ixe~ for it, and when it is no longer convenient to pay the price, they are equallv at 1 iberty to discard the pieee of htaman mechanism, — to throw away the utensil of flesh and blood, —with the nonehalanee of a dude in dis<jarding an out-of-date garment. Illostrations of these truths have l>een painfully numerous in the past : . Another has been brought to our notice during recent days. A well and popularly known meehanie has Xately been engaged on an Oahu Dlantation overseeing the laying and connecting of a pipe line. His 4uties obliged him to suffer heat -and thirst almost unendurable. His -compensation was 4he princely fig*ure of three dollars per day. His assistants were a gang of Japanese peons, their wage a few cents eaeh per day. They readily picked up the knowledge requisite to enab!e them to supply the plaee of the high-priced white meehanie. They were soon preDared with the aptness characteristic of our Asiatic slaves, io supplant the white man in his -?ocation. The barons used the white man at three dollars per day, nntil his heathen helpers had oeen iaught the art of pipe-laying, after whieh the coolies were left toutilize iheir newly acquired knowledge, -and the white man was discarded. "Thelatter has since been eeeking employment at a wage that will 3>rovide him with a diet more palaiableand nutritive than rice and jats; but the competition of Asiatic eooliea, under the beneficient and disinterested management of the «ugar ring patriots has well-nigh oxtinguished the prospect of eMployment for white men, outside of ihe two chief manufacturing eoneeme located here in Honolulu.