expect 9,000 tons refined sugar from 6,600 acres, grown by 430 different farmers.

From the Hawaiian Islands, under the falsely called reciprocity treaty, there came in free of duty last year 227,000 tons of sugar.

This equals the product of twenty-five such factories as ours. These 227,000 tons displaced the most profitable product of 165,000 acres of land and robbed 10,750 American farmers of their most profitable crop.

The manual labor which these 10,750 American farmers would have employed in the intensive farming which the cultivation of the sugar beet requires is still another consideration.

The factory labor yet another.

To refine a ton of duty-free Hawaiian sugar requires the labor of one man for one and one-third days. To grow from the soil up and manufacture one ton of refined sugar requires the labor of one man for thirty-eight days.

This 227,000 tons of Hawaiian duty-free sugar yearly displaces in money value for factory labor, $1,135,000; for farm labor and rentals, $9,000,000; for limestone, $400,000; for coal, $1,500,000; for other supplies $650,000.

The labor of allied industries, foundries, jute and cotton mills, etc., remains still to be reckoned on, and all this native labor displaced that a cooly-made contract labor product may thrive in a foreign island.

The three localities in California where the three beet-sugar factories are already established are the only really prosperous agricultural communities in that State to-day.

Domestic exports to Hawaii in 1895 were not so large as in 1883, less by nearly $1,000,000 than in 1890, and less by over a million and a quarter than in 1891.

In 1895-96 the value of Hawaiian sugar imported was over $19,000,000, upon which the duty, at 40 per cent, would have been $7,600,000.

For the sake of maintaining a foreign commerce of $3,648,000, and in order that a few shipping houses of San Francisco may benefit by the trade and keep control of the large cash balances of Hawaiian planters, the nation at large must give up $7,600,000 of revenue.

For the sake that coolies may work in a foreign climate which white labor can not stand, and where the white and dominant race forms

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

LL' 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.