THE HAWAIIAN AS AN UNSKILLED LABORER

By Wm. W. Goodale, Honolulu

The census of 1910 shows that of the total population of the Territory, 38,547 are of Hawaiian birth. Of that number, 9832 are adult males. Of the total number of adult males of Hawaiian birth in the Territory on January 31, 1913, 1074 were employed on sugar plantations. Of these, 174 were skilled men, mechanics and overseers, 904 were laborers and formed only two per cent of the 43,701 laborers employed in the principal agricultural industry of the country. The cultivation of rice and pineapples, the other important agricultural industries, employ few if any male Hawaiians, and even the raising of taro and the manufacture of poi, the staple food of the Hawaiian people, is largely in the hands of the Chinese. Portuguese and Japanese are taking the places on cattle ranches formerly filled by Hawaiians. The fishermen and many of the sailors on the inter-island fleet are Japanese.

Little would be thought of this if large numbers of Hawaiian laborers could be found living in their own homes and regularly employed in the manufacturing industries, or in other lines of trade or as producers of commodities for sale.

That, however, is not the case, and Hawaiian unskilled laborers are, to a great extent, an unattached and irresponsible part of the community, with few family ties or common bonds of interest with the rest of their people except that of race and for a few months every two years, politics.

To any one who knows the people, likes them and is in sympathy with them, and remembers their numerical strength and influence in their own country a few years ago, the condition is sad and the future of the pure Hawaiian race, as a race, seems uncertain.

OUTSIDE CAUSES

The causes of this are to a certain extent inherent, but to a much greater extent they are from outside themselves and due to conditions over which their government and their people have had little control.

They are today in many ways the passive victims of the rapid development of their own country and its resources by foreigners.

On the subject of the opening of foreign countries and their markets, John Arthur Hobson, M.A., says in a paper written for the First International Race Congress in London:

Where savage or semi-savage peoples are concerned, the task of building up sound industries and wholesome wants, the two foundations of industrial civilization, will be slow and difficult and may involve a long retention of political and economic authority before such a country can be left entirely to its own control, consistently with its own and the world's welfare. But in spite of the obvious perils which accompany such protection and education from the selfishness and greed, not only of traders but of governments, no other solution is possible.

These people have no natural or inherent right to withhold the natural resources of their country from the outside world. There is therefore no other solution than the education among civilized states of a higher sense of justice, humanity and economic wisdom in the rendering of that assistance.

While the question as to whether or not a "people has a natural or inherent right to withhold the natural resources of their country from the outside world" is certainly open to argument, the remainder of the quotation can be aptly applied to the history of Hawaii.

WAS AND IS GOOD MATERIAL

The native Hawaiian laborer was, and he still is, good material. He has contributed largely to the development of his country and his present almost complete elimination from the ranks of producers is an economic waste. The causes, as I have said, are partly inherent in the race, but not wholly, and in justice to them it is necessary to study the history of the country and its people during the past century.

THE JOURNAL OF RACE DEVELOPMENT, VOL. 5, NO. 4, 1915

In the last ninety-three years (a long human lifetime) that have elapsed since the arrival of the first missionaries, there have been many radical changes in the circumstances and customs of the people.

There has been a great change in the nationality of the men employed in agriculture and the trades, and the labor system has passed through many phases, from slavery, or enforced and unpaid labor, to freedom and a wage system. These changes have taken place during five periods of time, each as it passed, showing marked differences in the prevailing system from that of the preceding, but each merging almost imperceptibly into the next. In retrospect, however, the lines of division seem sharply drawn.

To a student of the history of labor, wages paid, the treatment of working people and their standing in the community in which they live, each of these periods deserves careful study, but in a paper of this kind, they can be merely touched upon.

FIRST PERIOD

The first period commenced before the arrival of the foreigners and continued down to, and slightly after, the arrival of the first missionaries, say about the year 1830. We do not know what changes and adjustments had taken place previous to that time that resulted in the working system found by foreigners in 1820. But it is enough for our purpose to say that the system of society, government and labor was of the feudal type, based, as was the feudal system of the old world in the middle ages, upon the ownership of the land, and no better example of this can be found than existed on Hawaii.

The common people held no property in their own right. The products of their labor belonged to the chiefs. They had no personal holdings of any kind, and their time, their women and children, and even their lives, were held at the will of their chiefs. Laborers received no pay for the work they performed for others, and they rendered compulsory service to the king, the chiefs and their agents, whenever called upon to do so. In return for their work,

and only so long as they remained loyal and subject to call for labor and for service as warriors, they were allowed the use of small tracts of land on which to raise their food, and were given rights, in common with others, to certain fish, fruits and other products of sea and forest.

Those who were skillful in the arts, such as canoe making, received greater rewards and more extended privileges than the ordinary unskilled laborers, and fighting men who distinguished themselves in the frequent wars were no doubt suitably rewarded.

ABJECT CONDITION

The condition of the common people, however, was abject, and the "good old days" often alluded to feelingly by strangers as the golden period of Hawaiian history, before contact with foreigners, and particularly the missionaries, had corrupted their manners and their morals, were so far as the common people were concerned, as purely imaginary as must have been the "Merrie England" of song and story to the lower stratum of English society of those days.

Of this period of Hawaiian history, David Malo says:

The condition of the common people was that of subjection to the chiefs, compelled to do their heavy tasks, burdened and oppressed, some even to death. The life of the people was one of patient endurance, of yielding to the chiefs to purchase their favor. The plain man must not complain. If the people were slack in doing the chief's work, they were expelled from the land, or even put to death.

The people held the chiefs in great dread. It was from the common people that the chiefs received their food and their apparel for men and women, also their homes and many other things. It was the makaainanas (common people) who did all the work on the land, yet all they produced belonged to the chiefs. The country people lived in a state of chronic fear and apprehension of the chiefs. It was a life of weariness, constantly burdened by one exaction after another.

There was no thrift, people were often hungry and would go without their food for days. The people about the court were bold and impudent in speech, there was hardly anyone about the court who did not practice robbery, and who was not a thief, embezzler, extortionist and a shameless beggar. Nearly everyone did these things.

This strong language is not used by an historian writing of a country and a people of the dim past, but by a man who was born twenty-seven years before the arrival of the first missionaries, and who was brought up in the customs and knew the daily life of those days.

OPPRESSIVE KAPU

Besides the tyranny and oppression by the chiefs and their agents, under which the common people lived, all the people, the rich and powerful to some extent, but more particularly, the poor and dependent, were subject to an elaborate kapu system that governed their daily life and habits. It affected the time and manner of doing the simplest acts, their food and their relations with each other, and imposed arbitrary rules of conduct and severe penalties for violating them. This kapu system, while intimately connected with the religious beliefs and fears of the people bore directly upon the labor system and the relations of the common people with their superiors in wealth and position.

The visits of Cook and Vancouver, and intercourse with traders during the early years of the nineteenth century, while giving the Hawaiians some experience with the forms of civilization, caused little change in the daily life and primitive customs of the people. Firearms had been introduced and they had learned the value and use of iron and other metals. The sandalwood trade had been developed, but the labor system remained unchanged, and it was the system described by David Malo that the missionaries found upon their arrival here in 1820.

From this time on, changes in the life and habits of the people came rapidly.

SECOND PERIOD

The second period in the industrial history of the Hawaiian people, 1830 to 1860, resulted in great changes in the character and ambitions of the people and a complete change in the labor system. The influence of mis