about 3 per cent only of the population, the laboring men of San Francisco now parade its streets calling for work, and a charitable fund aggregating $25,000 is daily published in its newspapers, and is now being disbursed to an idle crowd who clamor for the tickets doled out to them in the order of application, and which entitle each to a day's work at $1 per day upon an unnecessary boulevard.

Should a Coxey army again march on Washington and class ever be arrayed against class in our fair country, it will be because home labor is denied a right to work for its own market in order that foreign cooly labor may add to the wealth of a class now actively at work to influence national legislation in the perpetuation of their privileges.

The local agents of Hawaiian planters, without any possible accruing benefit to themselves and as mere retaliation against the producer of native sugar, are to-day so unpatriotic as to be collecting figures from native California sugar factories in order to produce them at Washington and support their claim that native sugar needs no protection. Whereas up to January 1, 1897, they knew that the Alameda Sugar Company had since 1889 paid out in dividends $130,000 and received in bounty $226,744.93, showing a loss without bounty of $96,744.93.

Conditioned upon favorable legislation, within two years the 75,000 tons of sugar needed on the Pacific coast would be entirely made from the native product, and not a pound of this Hawaiian sugar would be required to supply the coast consumption.

The opposition to tariff legislation has always contended that tariffs were designed to aid manufacturers, trusts, and the moneyed class generally. The abrogation of the Hawaiian treaty is respectfully asked in the interest of the agricultural class and of native labor.

For the purpose of diverting attention from the main question of protecting the California farmer and the investments of American capital in an American industry the advocates of the continuance of Hawaiian reciprocity have recently begun the use of part of the California press in appealing to the prejudices of people on the ground of an admission that Claus Spreckels had sold a minority interest in his two beet-sugar factories to the American sugar trust. While this fact may be regarded by many as a misfortune, the fact remains that there are other sugaries uncontrolled by the sugar trust and the development of the industry on so large a scale will tend to the permanent benefit of the depressed agricultural interests of the State.

Let the example of California in the matter of beet sugar be imitated by the different States along the northern and temperate belt of our country and the multiplicity of factories would make the control of the industry by any concentrated power a commercial impossibility. JAMES COFFIN.

Very respectfully,

Hon. R. F. PETTIGREW,

Senate Chamber, Washington, D. C.

MR. PETTIGREW: Mr. President, this letter is extremely interesting as bearing upon the production of beet sugar in California. The opinion therein expressed is unquestionably correct that if the beet-sugar industry was encouraged it would grow, so that it would supply the American market; and Mr. Coffin says the sugar trust would be a thing of the past and its occupation gone.

We propose to strike down this sugar industry, and in this connection I am sorry that I am again obliged to allude to the platform of the Republican party. I am afraid I shall find not one plank that they ever intended or pretended to live up to. Here is the plank with regard to beet sugar:

PROTECTION OF BEET-SUGAR GROWERS.

We condemn the present Administration for not keeping faith with the sugar producers of this country. The Republican party favors such protection as will lead to the production on American soil of all the sugar which the American people use, and for which they pay other countries more than $100,000,000 annually.

They propose to annex the soil in order to comply with that plank, and then they can produce the sugar upon American soil. They did not tell the people of the Dakotas and the people of Nebraska in the last campaign that they proposed to do it in that way; that they would annex Hawaii and make it American soil and there produce our protected sugar. They made our people believe, and they talked it upon the stump everywhere, that by their tariff they were going to encourage the beet-sugar industry in those States. Now it turns out that the platform was cunningly worded, and that they intended simply to stimulate production on foreign soil and then annex the soil!

Here is McKinley's letter of acceptance. It reads as follows:

The Republican platform wisely declares in favor of such encouragement to our sugar interests as will lead to the production on American soil of all the sugar which the American people use. . .

Now he is trying to annex the soil.

Confidence in home enterprises has almost wholly disappeared. Our men are idle, and, while they are idle, men abroad are occupied in supplying us with goods. . . . It is not open mints which is the need of the time, but open mills for the employment of American workingmen; . . . the establishment of a wise protective policy which shall encourage manufacturing at home.

He is at present engaged, in violation of his duties as President, in lobbying this measure through Congress, in violation of the spirit, if not the words, of the platform on which he was elected. His interest is its chief support, for there are no arguments to sustain this measure; nobody presents any argument, and nobody has any argument to present. I have been told that this measure would fall to the ground if it were not for the intense concern of the President in the matter.

We have heard a great deal about the coffee industry of Hawaii, and that we can not produce the coffee we use in this country if we do not annex the islands. I am going to show that they can not produce it in Hawaii; I am going to show it from their own works-from Thrum's Annual. They can produce some coffee, but here is a record of coffee production since 1877. I am going to put it in the RECORD, and any one who will examine it will conclude that they can not successfully produce coffee in that country. For instance, in 1877 they produced 170,379 pounds of coffee; in 1882, 3,008; in 1884, 950 pounds; in 1885, 3,786 pounds; in 1886, 2,748 pounds; in 1887, 2,875 pounds; in 1888, 3,680 pounds, and in 1895, 183,680 pounds-just a little more than they produced in 1877. ***

What is the trouble? The trouble is that some insect destroys the crop, so that it is not safe to go into the business. The further trouble is a white mildew on the leaves of the plants. I asked planters if that was not injurious. They said, "Oh, no; it amounts to nothing;" but it appears that from 1877, when they produced 170,379 pounds of coffee, the production fell to nothing, and never exceeded 3,600 pounds up to 1888. Something destroyed the crop. They can not produce coffee successfully.

A

CHAPTER III

LABOR IN HAWAII

LL1 who consent to work in the Hawaiian Archipelago are virtually slaves, for they work under the laws of contract labor and can not leave their employer until the contract has expired. The laborer of Honolulu gets 30 cents a day and boards himself out of it. Besides the 40,000 natives there are 50,000 more of the most undesirable people in the world and about the most discouraging material to make a republic of-Chinese, Japanese, Portuguese, Polynesians, and unclassified hordes from the great Micronesian Ocean to the west, unable to read or write, and with little regard either for their own liberty or the liberty of others.

*

Why is it that there were employed 84 Americans on sugar estates in 1895, and that none were so employed in 1896? Why is it they were discharged? Because the Japs do the work for $12.50 a month, and the Americans get from $50 to $75 a month. So the American was not wanted. The men who talk so much of their love of country and the prospect of American laborers being imported to Hawaii discharged their American employees and filled their places with Asiatics.

I will show further that it appears that they discharged the German and British laborers, as well as the American laborers, and for the same reason; and yet they tell us an American community is going to grow up on those islands and American labor is going there to find employment!

It appears from the table that in 1895 there were 2,499

1. Speech in the Senate July 2, 1894. 2. Speech in the Senate June 23, 1898.

Portuguese employed upon the sugar plantations, and in 1896, one year after, 2,268 were employed upon the sugar plantations. Why? They were discharged and their places were filled by Asiatic laborers, coming in under contract; and before I get through I will show what that contract is.

Of the Japanese there were 19,212 males in all the islands. In 1895, 11,584 were employed upon the sugar plantations, and in 1896, 12,893. That shows who took the places of the Europeans who had been previously employed. Of the Chinese there were 19,167 males upon the islands; and in 1895 there were employed of this number upon the sugar plantations 3,847; and the next year there were 6,289 Chinamen employed upon the sugar estates; and yet we are told about American people and American interests and American labor; and that is one of the arguments set forth by those advocating the acquisition of this "paradise of the Pacific," inhabited by the males of the human race!

Of South Sea Islanders there were, as will be seen by the table, 321, according to the census of 1896, upon all the islands. Of those 133 were employed upon the sugar estates in 1895 and 115 in 1896; of other nationalities 720 were by the census upon all the islands, and in 1895 there were 97 employed, and in 1896 600 were employed-an increase of laborers employed upon sugar plantations from 1895 to 1896 of 3,660.

This is a comment made by Mr. Joseph O. Carter; and I quote the figures from this same book, the Hawaiian Annual, that the American, British, and German people do not find estate work desirable, except as skilled laborers. The American farm hand would find estate work most uninviting.

The figures also prove that the sugar planters find it more profitable to import new laborers on three-years' contracts than to engage labor already on the ground, the reason being that the newcomer works for $12.50 per month, while the old hand demands a higher wage.

The smaller percentage of Chinese laborers on estates is due to the fact that the Japanese is the cheaper man. Japanese