| Show written tor for this paper HAWAII UP TO DATE copyrighted 1897 by bv frank a Ca carpenter Menter washington D C july 1897 HAVE spent some time at the hawaiian legation this week gathering practical up to date information as to the islands i which it is now proposed to I 1 annex to the united states if the annexation treaty is confirmed in the senate a large emigration to hawain will immediately follow and thousands of americans will want to know just what this new territory is and what pos 0 sible chances there are for oa 01 0 0 them to make mone money y out 0 3 4 1 abc this is what I 1 have tried to ascertain minister hatch and mr thurston put all their resources at my disposal T they he y have answered my questions have ve introduced me to sugar pianist and others who have just cume come from 4 alulu and from whom I 1 have the feest of news in information format ion I 1 have also access to the large collection of new to achs just received by the wabian minister so some me of which lie be diore me as I 1 write these photos photographs graphs abo show w h how ow fast th the e islands ba have ve been modernized there dozens of residences in honolulu hen h have cost and upward se city has magnificent stone buildings building st torches bes which would be a credit to ington and a masonic temple inch ich would compare favorably with y masonic b dilding in the united latea es the city cont contains tins about tople aud in proportion to its size it is ig of the lich cities of the world all s tho the houses bouses have large yards and helens dens about them and many of them e shaded by pam palm trees honolulu right under the mountains on the y of the sea it is only six miles H the government house to the sum of the mountains at the back of the m 4 these mountains are 3 1000 let fet J and are covered with woods to ifie il tops the government building comes will belong r to the dS states estates tates it is a magnificent t sad and was formerly the palace of the there are numerous telegraph s in honolulu the town has more irones e s in proportion to its size than other efter city of the world every a telephone and there aro are connections to almost it every on go the islan islands of bahu oahu hawaii on the island old of maui the telephone is being put up and in a short time every one ot of the larger islands will have its telephonic connections there is no place in the world where public schools are so carefully managed as in the sandwich islands those of honolulu have magnificent buildings the high school is held in a palace which was built for the princess Pria cess ruth the sister of the last king ot of the kamehameha in eha line she gave it to her daughter mrs bishop who jelt it to her husband charles R bishop charles R bishop is the vice president of the bank of california at sin francisco and he is I 1 am told its largest stockholder he sold the building a short time ago to the government for 3 oooo and it is now used tor for a high school the building is surrounded by five acres of beautiful gardens and it is in the very heart of the city the government has established free schools all over the islands neighborhood which has forty children h has as a school house and a teacher and there here is no place in the united states where the boys bays put in so many school days in the year school is held for nine months and the hours are from 9 to 2 school attendance is compulsory and the law in this respect is enforced everywhere in each school district there are one or two school policemen who come into the school house every morning and poll the school it a boy or girl is absent a record is made of it and if no good excuse is given the next day the policeman calls upon toe the scholars family it if the offense is repeated the heads ot the family are called before the police court and fined io 10 such boys as play truant a certain number of times limes are taken irom from the schools and put in the government reform schools where they are taught during the remainder of their minority these laws extend to all classes casses of 1 the pearile the children of the japanese and chinese are compelled to go to school as are also those of the portuguese tiie tae result re sulLis is that all of the citi children laren of or the hawaiian islands over a certain age can read and write and fihs ihs ih grade ot of education is a very high one the majority ot of teachers are americans who rec receive ive all the way from to 2400 a year as ai sd salaries aries the school furniture lurn iture comes from the united states aad as do 0 also the doors and windows and other lumber ot of which the schoolhouses school houses are built the lime for the houses is imported from california honolulu has a public library containing volumes its Y M C A has a splendid gymnasium and reading room and there are tree free public libraries in several other towns on tho the islands honolulu has several large h hotels tola thi the big biggest g t que one ch gg arges 40 fc n q day some of the others charge chaij fe 2 the rhe expense of living is dearer than in the united states it costs I 1 am told fully fifty percent per cent more to keep house in the sandwich islands than it does in washington you have japanese and chinese for servants but you cannot get along without a number of them everything you eat with the exception of vegetables and meat is imported and almost everything you wear comes from the united states at the legation today I 1 got the honolulu prices of the more common articles hams cost from 16 to 30 30 cents a pound bacon rom 16 to 20 cents and cheese from 20 20 to 35 cents a pound flour costs a hundred weight and begs from 25 to 50 ce ts a dozen on the other handt tresh meat is quite cheap you can get good porterhouse steak for from 6 to 15 cents a pound corn beef will cost you 7 cents a pound potatoes 2 cents a pound and ice about z cent a pound you can hire a cook tor for from fc to 16 a week and a nurse will cost you from 9 to 12 a month the steamship rates in going to the island are not high the round trip costs and you have several good lines by which to make the trip the oceanic line sails twice it ft month from san franc the pacific mail and the 0 and 0 steamships stop there on their way to japan and there is 13 a canadian line which will take you irom from victoria to honolulu once a month the eight largest of the sandwich S Is lands which form the best part of the country are less in size than massachusetts they have a population ot of about of which over are either wholly or partly natives or chinese or japanese less japanese all of these work more or less and hence the islands are no place for por men common laborers or clerks there are more bookkeepers and c in honolulu today than can find employment itie fhe chinese of there are and jainese jap mese nese 24 have not only ruined the inn white labor mark it but they nave ta a large extent swallowed up the small businesses the natives also compete in the labor market As common workmen chinese and japanese get from 12 so 50 to 15 a month and board them t the portuguese and hawaiians Hawaii ans receive as high as 18 tor for the same work white teamsters get about 30 30 a month and board bookkeepers book keepers on the plantations receive from aioo zoo to a month and overseers about the same almost all the mechanical trades are supplied by the chinese and japanese the japanese do it a great deat deal of car carpen peu ter work receiving ther ellor arom aso toba day there are japanese shoo makers and tailors and theve there are am ahw ese plumbers and carpenters cac penters la ja there tail stores the chino chinese ud and ija japanese Jap aoese compete together for the business ano and I 1 am told that the japanese capane se are now giving the chinese a very hard race for the reason that the chinese import their goods direct from england and america and the japanese get only samples and then send these samples on to japan to be copied there for the hawaiian trade the japanese of honolulu agrenot nearly so reliable Lu business siness men as the chinese they take many risks and frequently go into bankruptcy there are I 1 am told about boco japs in honolulu an and d more than three times that many chinese japanese women as well as men have bane been imported in laige numbers to work on the plantations such importations are on the contract labar the contract usually being made lor for three years the big money that has been made in hawaii in the post past has been from sugar and nd it is in ugar sugar I 1 find tb that at i the he big mony ey is being made today it takes an of 01 capital a pital however to run a plantation ard of the sixty different pienta flous in the island there is not one that is capitalized at les lees than and the money invested invest fd in most of them runs into the millions sp eckels has no longer a monopoly of the sugar business he began to sell out his plantations sc me t me ago and then all of a sudden stopped selling he now controls only one plantation in the islands and has a small amount ot of stock in several others he i i opposing annexation and one reason of his opposition sit it ft is claimed is that he will lose te the refi refining ioni rig of the hawaiian sugar if the islands become a part cf the united states the sales of his plantations have had something to do w u ith his family quarrels in which he has been fighting his sons the sugar plantations are owned almost altogether by americans they are capitalized at about f some ol of them have paid quite large dividends the average for the past year bavin having been about 12 per cent 1 am told lt that some plantations plantation s have made dc uble this the ns however in tb the e prices of su sugar gar h acae a e been 0 o gi great eat that the business busine s is quite precarious it is managed on strict business principles every means which uni cited money can fut famish nish be beng ng used to reduce i the he cost take for instance the ewa on which abde 13 tons ions of sugar lest last year at and is tow row paying g big dividends Y this bis plen plantation tation has a capital of a million dollars and about stockholders it made no mor money ey for years and was sper speeding ding vast amounts right along the plantation is eighteen miles from honolulu Hono ulu and it cc comprises 3 acres ever y foot of its cane has to be watered throughout the year by artesian wells it uses enormous pumping bachint machinery which is imported from america its first pumps came from fram new york and it has just now put in others made t y frazer and chalmers of chicago at a cast of about in another plantation near the ewa ara they are putting in built by the worthington pump compary Cor of cf new york and I 1 am told that thai th plain s tation alone alove will spend something like jike on its exten extensions this year 1 learn is little undeveloped sugar lard left in the islands such new plantations as are made will have to be irrigated by means of artesian anesian wells and the t ost cost is so great that thai it will re quire a very targe large capital the last trifel three plantations which hae been es bed hed have hae cost and there is no room in sugar for the small capitalist and all of the plantations are now managed by stock companies it takes sixten sixteen months to grow the crop and only three crops can be made in four years fertilizers to the mount amount of were used on the cane there last year and more than half of this fertilizing matter was imported much of the remainder of the fertilizer came from the guano field of the sandwich islands it II the country is annexed uncle sam will add to his population an enormous colony of biros on layson island which is far to the westward there are thousands and thousands ot of sea gulls they cover the island walking as it were over the beds of guano made by themselves and their an ce these birds are so thick that you have to kick ahm aside as you walk about the island they are exceedingly cee tame lame and by law no shooting is allowed there there are several overseers who live there and they have to build little paling fences arcand their cottages to keep heep he birds from crawling upon the porches and going into the houses the young gulls are said to be gcoy for eating and I 1 am told that when the oer overseers seers or laborers want birds on boast for breakfast they go out with a club and knock over a couple and bring the flit m in to the cook the hawaiians Hawaii ans here at washington say that the best chance for the large or small investor in hawaii just now is in coffee lands there is a large amount of such lands in the islands they lie just above the sugar belt at an altitude of from 1500 to feet above the sea giving the planter the finest climate in the world good lands can be bought on the market for 25 an acre tut but the government which is very anxious to have small investors is selling itskov its government lands to homesteaders for from io 10 to 15 an acre fifty acres make a good sized plantation for one man to attend to the work is more like than ihan farming the trees have to be carefully trimmed and taken care of they begin to bear about the third year and the fourth year produce a good ci aop op then the ph plantation an independent d ept adent living for the rt remainder maince r of a mans life end and a good inheritance for his children it takes some labor however to make such a plantation and a man should have at least ahead at the start I 1 have before mean me an t estimate of cf the cast of cf maintaining a plantation ot of seventy five acres for seven years year including the purchase of the land and the construction ot of all the buildings this shaws an exit expenditure ind iture of f at the clo close cloe e of the third year the fourth year such a plantation should produce pounds of coffee and bring in in an income ot of io Soo the fifth year it should pay 15 and the sixth year according to these figures 18 olo and at that time if leave ave the planter ahead by the cit akse se of the next year be will be 20 OCO ahead and will have bave practically made a fortune in this estimate the clearing cf the land fencing the purchasing ol of the plants and tools the salary ot of a manger who gets 1200 1200 a year the paying of nine nine japanese as laborers and the art preparation caration pa ration of the coffee for the tb e market are included how close the figures are I 1 do not know but they were prepared by the department of foreign affairs of the hajarian Ha government A fifty acre plantation vi would cc cast st comparatively less ss as the owner inthis in athis case might manage manag it himself I 1 asked some questions as to the condition of real estate in honolulu I 1 T ao am told that it has steadily increased during J q the past four years and that suburban property has doubled in value durin durina that time ane annexation will give rt ft another upward shoot and this it is believed will be the case with all kinds of property in the islands one of the best chances for money making is I 1 am told in the building ot of an electric railroad in the city of honolulu an english cova corn pany now has a franchise but it is not ao an exclusive one and neither the cOni company pany nor their road is popular the road is capitalized at 37 a mile and it haa ha fifteen n miles of track it has bobtailed bob tailed cars run by mules and although there has been a general demand that eleo elec be adopted the company will not accede to it As far as I 1 can learn the english acted the hog bog as to the matter from the start they capitalized ed the e road at and issued iao worth of bonds they took some of oath stock themselves sold the bonds in lon llon 3 don and appointed a lot of london dl di 1 rectors each of whom gets a good sal J ary by the time the interest on thea th bonds and the salaries are paid thercie there is s little left |
