THE COURSE OF EMPIRE

CHAPTER I

THE ISLANDS AND THEIR PEOPLE

T1 seems to me absurd for the Senator from California

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and the other advocates of the annexation of the Hawaiian Islands to assert upon this floor that the prevailing opinion concerning the character of the people who inhabit those islands is founded on ignorance. The allegation of a lack of information is generally made by Impudence in its effort "to make the worse appear the better reason." Probably the Americans and other white people who have emigrated to the islands are very good people; they are certainly smart and shifty, aggressive, bright, and prosperous. They went there to convert the savages to Christianity.

The first of them was the distinguished Captain Cook. Cook seems to have belonged to the church militant. He had quarreled with everybody in England whom he had anything to do with and went to sea because he could not live any longer on land. He cruised around a good deal, converting people more or less to his way of thinking, and when he struck the Sandwich Islands immediately put in operation his reformatory methods. One of his yawls drifted away from the ship in the night and one of the barbarians picked it up. Captain Cook immediately concluded that the island was inhabited only by thieves, and in order to cure that propensity he immediately stole the king, thus establishing a distinguished precedent for the method adopted by our late minister resident, John L. Stevens. Cook led a body of marines ashore,

1. Speech in the Senate July 2, 1894.

seized the person of His Majesty, dragged him to the wharf, and there, just before the great revolution was effected, was himself killed by a mob of these inconsiderate savages who preferred their own form of government.

This effort to establish Cook's variety of a republic took place during the American Revolution, and since that unfortunate attempt the work has been steadily going on. A good many other Captain Cooks have landed there, sometimes in the guise of speculators, sometimes under the cloak of missionaries. They have carried thither not only theories of the universe which were novel to the islanders, but cannon, powder, rum, tobacco, opium, and a series of complicated and odious diseases of which they had never dreamed. The net result of this determined effort of the white man to reform and improve the condition of the natives is that the population has been reduced about three-quarters.

Mr. Charles Nordhoff, who wrote up the Sandwich Islands with a very friendly pen for the New York Herald,

says:

In 1832 the islands had a population of 130,315 souls; in 1836 there were but 108,579; in 1840, only 84,165, of whom 1,962 were foreigners; in 1850, 69,800, of whom 3,216 were foreigners; and in 1860, 62,959, of whom 4,194 were foreigners. The native population has decreased over 60 per cent in forty years.

Since 186o they have still further diminished, and the present population is 90,000, of whom 40,500 are natives and 49,500 are foreigners. It will be noticed that the natives have decreased as the foreigners have increased. The representatives of Christian nations who entered the Sandwich Islands with Captain Cook and his followers have taught some of the natives to read, write, and cipher, and to wear a good deal of unnecessary clothing, which has diminished their power of resistance to disease by relaxing their systems, and have introduced there special and insidious diseases, corrupting the blood and transmitting corruption to the progeny. The touch of the white man since Cook has had the same blighting effect in Honolulu that the touch of the white man since Pizarro has had in Peru.

And now it is seriously proposed to annex this impoverished, degraded people-for they are as impoverished as they are degraded. The missionaries have not only looked out for their morals, but for their property. They long ago succeeded in gaining title to nearly all the land, and now they have captured the Government and set up a Government of their own which has no resemblance whatever to what we call a republic. Under Queen Liliuokalani they had a Limited Monarchy; under Dole they have a Limited Republic-limited to about four men. A republic is adapted only to a people who live between the latitudes of 30° and 55°, where competition is sharp; where work is indispensable to life; where the incessant struggle for existence goes on; where the necessity of defending the home fireside from the depredations of winter makes existence difficult. The Hawaiian Islands lie outside of that shining belt of the earth where the constant fight with nature brings out all that is masterful in man, and where, therefore, he finds himself capable of self-government.

All that a man in the Hawaiian Islands is obliged to do to gain a living is to plant a banana tree and steal a fish line. A republic implies intelligence, education, mutual forbearance, tireless energy, enterprise, tremendous industry, the flowering of the domestic virtues. We must not forget that. A monarchy is the best possible form of government for a people who are not fit for anything better. The natives of the Hawaiian Islands to-day dress in calico nightgowns, and, as when Captain Cook's shadow first cursed that summer land, they sleep in grass huts and lazily live on fish and poi.

In the Hawaiian Islands 1 are found the most contradictory conditions. In a small belt along the coast and in the few low-lying valleys the conditions of life are easy, for the heated air makes clothing unnecessary, and the fertile soil enables all tropical fruits and vegetables to grow almost without the planting; but in all the rest of the islands exists the temperature of our Northern winter. Having an area about as large as Massachusetts, and a population about a quarter as large as that of the city of Washington, these islands are 1. Speech in the Senate July 2, 1894.

mostly composed of volcanic scoria, about as unadapted to vegetation as so much cast iron. It is the crater of the vastest volcano in the world, desolated with ice and fire, generally either too hot or too cold for human endurance. Nothing which the face of the planet presents to man is more bleak, barren, inhospitable, menacing, and terrible than the tremendous area which constitutes the peak of this mountain of flame. So, while the maintenance of life in the valleys and along the hot coast seems easy, Hawaii presents no more temptation to the enterprising emigrant than Ecuador or the equatorial regions of South America, where the mango matures with ease and man with difficulty.

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The Hawaiian Islands are fifteen in number. Five of them are inhabited. They lie between longitude 154° and 160° west, and between latitude 18° and 22° north. The island of Neehau contains 97 square miles and a population of fourteen families. It has an area of 62,000 acres. It is the first of the group to the westward that has any population. It is owned by a citizen of Great Britain, a New Zealander, who bought it from the King many years ago and uses it for grazing purposes. Upon it are raised from thirty to forty thousand sheep, and their wool is admitted to the United States free of duty, although we impose a high duty upon wool from every other country in the world. Certainly no American interest is promoted by our method of dealing with the island of Neehau.

Kauai, the next island, has 590 square miles, and contains 377,000 acres of land, and a population of 15,392. It is owned almost exclusively by German planters, who are raising sugar by the employment of Asiatic labor, and their products are imported to the United States free of duty. There is no American plantation upon this island. Some of the stock in the German companies is owned by the so-called American citizens of Hawaii, but no American citizen owns any property on this island whatever. Yet the people of the United States are taxed to sustain the remission of duties to the extent 1. Speech in the Senate June 23, 1898.