STATISTICS OF IMMIGRATION, HONOLULU, 1905 TO 1909 AND FIRST SIX MONTHS

Total.. 44, 392 9, 005 3, 656 27, 857 2, 801 2, 475 13, 632 3, 774 5, 516 41, 489 6, 575 7, 991 +2, 903 +2, 430-4, 335

1

66 +

80

ARRIVALS OF CHINESE, JAPANESE, AND KOREANS IN THE TERRITORY OF HAWAII FROM JULY 1, 1900, TO DECEMBER 31, 1905.

31, 1905)....2,548 1152,663 14 29, 156 8,873 38, 029 1666,717 677 7,394 465 38, 421 9, 665 48,086 645

DEPARTURES OF CHINESE, JAPANESE, AND KOREANS FROM HAWAII TO THE ORIENT AND THE COAST FROM JUNE 14, 1900, TO DECEMBER 31, 1905.

1 Not reported separately.

28 721 40,728 6, 784 4, 277 52, 507

Figures are for 1903, 1904, and to June 30, 1905; figures for each year and for age and sex not separately reported.

3 Not including data for 718 Japanese, age and sex not reported.

In addition to bringing Portuguese and Russians to Hawaii, the territorial board of immigration has also maintained agents in California and New York City for the purpose of getting immigrants from the mainland. These latter attempts were practically fruitless. The real present desire of the people of the Territory is to attract and to retain as permanent settlers immigrants of Caucasian stock who will become citizens. Political considerations on the one hand, military considerations more or less remote on the other, and more

powerful than either (with those whose chief concern is as employers), a desire to be rid once for all of the constant expense and trouble of seeking labor away from home in the face of growing legal and economic obstacles, have created this sentiment in favor of an immigration policy different from that pursued in the days of contract labor. An added inducement for plantation employers to diversify and increase the Caucasian labor force was the strike of Japanese field workers in 1909.

THE JAPANESE STRIKE OF 1909.

The most important labor conflict that ever occurred in Hawaii began on some of the larger Oahu sugar plantations, near the city of Honolulu, in May, 1909, and continued throughout a good part of the following summer. Though there was no cessation of employment outside of this island, the issue was understood to involve all plantations in the Territory; the direct cost of the strike to employers-well toward $2,000,000-was distributed among all the plantations, and the striking laborers were supported by funds collected from their fellow-countrymen still at work in the cane fields of other islands and in the city of Honolulu.

The most important features of the strike were the following:

1. Sentiment in its favor was aroused by an agitation begun not by the laborers themselves, but by educated Japanese journalists and business men in Honolulu.

2. The movement had from the first a national character, but was not unanimously favored by the educated Japanese.

3. The strike was conducted by an organization officered and dominated by educated Japanese not themselves manual laborers, instead of by a trade union as known to Americans.

4. The demands of the strikers were for higher wages for day hands in the fields, and were strengthened by the fact that planters were offering one-third more pay, in similar positions, to Caucasian than to oriental field hands.

5. Enough citizen strike breakers, chiefly Hawaiians and Portuguese, offered themselves at a wage of $1.50 a day, in the neighborhood of Honolulu, to carry on the operations of the plantations.

6. Except in relation to strike breakers and nonsympathizers of their own nationality, the Japanese strikers were perfectly lawabiding in the sense of refraining from violence and destruction of property.

7. The strike ended through the financial weakness of the strikers, and because their leaders adopted a policy toward their Japanese opponents which brought them into the toils of the law.

8. Following the strike the condition of Japanese laborers has been improved, and they now earn more than formerly.

9. The fact that Japanese overseers and mechanics joined with their fellow-countrymen in a strike affecting chiefly field labor has caused some managers to substitute Caucasians and Hawaiians gradually for Japanese formerly employed in these more responsible positions.

10. The Japanese Government representatives in Honolulu gave no support or encouragement to the strikers.

The genesis of the strike was thus summed up by the chief justice of the Territory, in a decision relating to criminal charges brought against the strike leaders, from the testimony of those leaders and of men of their own nationality opposed to them. One of the principal promoters of the movement for higher wages was M. Negoro, an American-educated Japanese.

The defendant, Negoro, after returning, in May, 1908, from studies at the University of California and occupying himself in writing for the press, prepared in September of that year a plan for getting higher wages for those Japanese plantation laborers who worked by the month for Japanese who had planting contracts. Sheba, editor of the Japanese newspaper, the Hawaii Shinpo of Honolulu, declined to publish the article on the ground that it was an inopportune time to stir up agitation on the subject among the laborers and that it would be better to make an effort to induce the planters themselves to advance the wages of this class of labor after certain questions affecting Cuban sugar and Japanese immigration were disposed of. Negoro believed, however, that the time had come to arouse Japanese on the subject and that it was not fair that the contractors only were doing well or that those who worked for them could obtain good wages for efficiency, but that all should receive a higher monthly wage, requiring, of course, a higher wage for contractors as well. The object of Negoro appears to have been to arouse discontent among laborers employed by contractors and then persuade them to demand and insist upon an increase of wages. Being unable to induce Sheba to publish his article, he got it published in the Nippu Jiji, a Honolulu newspaper, edited by the defendant, Soga.

The article, entitled "How about the higher wages," published in the Nippu Jiji of July 31, 1908, begins: "We regret that the wages in Hawaii are disproportionately low in comparison with the large profits," and presents an argument why the Japanese Government should interpose, "for the Japanese Government is well aware that its subjects are not born to be slaves of the capitalists of Hawaii,' saying: "Cane contractors (Japanese) are making profits, and a large number of them are returning to Japan, thus diminishing the number of laborers." The prohibition of immigration to Hawaii, says the article, "is an act silently demanding higher wages, and we indorse it;" adding: "The Japanese laborers, who are placed in the position of slaves by reason of the prohibition of immigration to America, do not have courage to ask for higher wages;" then going on to urge that the "Japanese Government, taking great courage itself, should request the American Government to dissolve the prohibition of emigration of Hawaiian Japanese to the mainland. The time is ripe. Though the Hawaiian immigrants do not say it in so many words, it

is their hope of years and their silent prayer that they recover the lost liberty of choosing and changing their place of abode and become a full-fledged man and to be in a position to earn a just reward for their labor."

But there is evidence that Negoro's plan soon assumed a somewhat different form. He testified that at the time that Sheba declined his article he himself "was not very earnest;" but a few weeks after, while in the oflice of the Daily Chronicle (a Japanese newspaper in Honolulu), the higher-wage question was discussed, "and I think I was the proposer. I said the wages are too low and we should have higher wages for the Japanese laborers," but Tsurushina "planted himself upon the contract system" and refused to "go into the movement or urge the movement," saying that the Japanese were "very much nowadays going into independent industries," many of them raising cane on contract and beginning to permanently reside in Hawaii; that this was "a very good tendency in order to encourage the people to get into independent trade," and "raising cane by contract is a very good opening for the Japanese laborers;" and that if wages of common laborers were increased to, say, $26, it would be more profitable than raising cane by contract, and Japanese, in place of being cane contractors, would become a dependent class of laborers; therefore he opposed the higher-wage movement. "I did not convince him," says Negoro, as he and also Sheba were "opposed in principle to the high-wage movement." After the publication of the first article the "Nippu Jiji continued to publish articles advocating higher wages," and a controversy on the subject was "bitterly waged between the Shinpo and Jiji. About November 1 the Jiji issued an extra, calling for a conference at the Asahi Theater, which "was the very first meeting of any organized effort on the part of the Japanese, and "the first thing that materialized or took shape of a movement." Negoro thought Tasaka wrote the notice, but was not sure. "Some one of us wrote it." There were 13 or 14 present at the meeting(no laborers) small merchants and hotel keepers and the defendants Soga, Tasaka, and Negoro. It was proposed at the meeting to bring about a union of the four Japanese newspapers published in Honolulu, being the Shinpo, Jiu, Jiji, and Chronicle. One of the objects of the meeting was to "spread the higher-wage sentiment among Japanese in these islands by and through the efforts and assistance of the newspapers." The next meeting was at Ishi's house, about November 3, called in pursuance of a resolution at the theater meeting to get the newspaper men together, and who were present at Ishi's house as well as all of the defendants. An altercation arose between Sheba and Makino, who came in late, on the ground that the latter was not a newspaper man. Makino presided and proposed a mass meeting of Japanese. A week later a second meeting was held at Ishi's house, at which all the defendants were present, with representatives of the newspapers and of the merchants' association. Nothing further was done for about two weeks "except that the daily, the Nippu Jiji, was continuing to write articles on higher wages," when, about the middle of December, a meeting was called at the Japanese Y. M. C. A. building in Honolulu "with the purpose of coming to a definite plan for pushing this question further.'" Makino was chairman of the meeting, Negoro secretary, and all of the defendants were present. It was