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Blount Report: Affairs in Hawaii

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                            1000					HAWAIIAN   ISLANDS.

A. I think it would make it a very serious matter. 
Q. The Chinese allowed to vote-still worse?
A. I do not think so. I think the Chinese would be the opposite of the Japanese. I think the Japanese would be 
controlled by their Government. They would vote as they were directed to vote. The Chinese are not very friendly 
with the Japanese, and they would vote to the contrary.
Q. Who would control the Chinese vote?
A. I think they would be very largely controlled by their societies.
Q. How many overseers have you on your plantations?
A, Nineteen.
Q. Do you have to have men with every squad of hands during the hours of labor?
A. There is an overseer with every gang of 20 or 30 people. I have a head overseer who looks after all the different 
gangs.
Q. Suppose a fellow is idling in the field, what do you do?
A. Well, if he is a day man, he is discharged.
Q. If he is a contract laborer?
A. We dock him. We give him half or three-quarters of a day and if they keep it up we resort to the law and have 
them arrested for refusing to work.
Q. What do you accomplish by putting him in jail?
A. It has been rather unsatisfactory as a rule. The first offense he is merely ordered back to his work and the 
plantation has to pay the cost of the court and charge it to the man. He does not care. He has to work it off.
Q. Well, what do you do then?
A. If he refuses to obey orders and work he is arrested again. Perhaps a light penalty of two or three dollars fine is 
inflicted. That the plantation can pay and take out of his wages, or if the plantation refuses to do so he is put on the 
road to work it out. The third offense he is likely to have three months' imprisonment. That is a new law enacted in 
the last Legislature. Before that you could go on having him arrested and paying fines. It was better to drop the man 
than to go on with that.
Q. At this time most of the laborers are Japanese?
A. Yes; almost entirely. A few Chinese come in, but very few.
Q. The Portuguese cost so much you do not get them?
A. Yes. A large number leave the country and go to California. I venture to say that 25 per cent of the Portuguese 
have left this country within the last eighteen months. The wages have been cut down in order that the plantations 
might exist, and I doubt if they could exist if they didn't have wives and children to work. By all working they can 
get along very well. Many more would leave the country if they had means.
Q. Then the sugar-planters' best reliance for labor now is by negotiations with the Japanese Government?
A. That is the only way we have now to speak of.
Q. Are you in favor of annexation?
A. Strongly.
Q. What would be the effect on property here-on values?
A. Outside of sugar plantation s I think lands would enhance in value. It would open up our crown lands and bring a 
desirable class of people here.
Q. Are not the crown lands very largely leased out?
A. A great many of them have not been leased out.

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