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1925

would come there in great numbers if the government of the islands had 
not exercised authority to keep them out by virtue of labor-contract laws.
That seems to be rather an unusual statement, and yet I am told by men there 
identified with the business interests of the country that really in the beginning, 
after the republic was established, the fear was that they would be overrun by 
Japanese coming to that island, and the labor laws of that country seemed to 
act as a restraint upon the Japanese coming there except as they wanted to come 
for labor purposes.

Mr. TILLMAN. Has the Senator any figures as to the number of Japanese who 
have come there since the islands were annexed?

Mr. CULLOM.   Yes; I have them somewhere here.

Mr. TILLMAN.   I understand there are upward of 30,000 now.

Mr. CULLOM. I think between 25,000 and 30,000 have come in since the flag 
of the United States was raised over the government building in that island.

Mr. TELLER.   How many are there all told?

Mr. CULLOM.   There are nearly 40,000 Japanese there.

Mr. MORGAN. I think the Senator from Illinois is wrong about that, 
because at the expiration of these labor contracts the Japanese have all gone 
back. Since the contracts have expired they have gone back. They have not 
settled in the island.

Mr. CULLOM. That is true. They do go back generally when the contracts 
expire.

Mr. MORGAN. I should like to make one more observation about it. All 
those men retained their allegiance to Japan when they came to the islands and 
never had any idea of changing it at all, and many of them are alleged to be 
regular soldiers in the Japanese army.

Mr. TILLMAN. If the Senator will permit me, that was the plea, under 
which the islands were annexed, that Japanese soldiers had come over there in 
disguise and would seize the islands for Japan.

Mr. CULLOM. Of course at the time of the annexation that was the fear of 
people in this country as well as on the islands. But we did not understand that 
to be the case.

Mr. TILLMAN.   No one has any fear of that now?

Mr. CULLOM.   I think not.
When our laws are extended over the islands it is somewhat questionable 
what the effect will be, and whether the islands will not fill up more rapidly 
with such laborers than they do now. The total number of laborers of the 
			Hawaiian Islands is about 40,000, and about one-half that number is under 
contract, those under contract being mainly Japanese and Chinese. Very few, if 
any, of the Portuguese laborers are under contract. As a matter of fact, as I have 
stated, there have been no importations of Chinese into those islands since the 
annexation act was passed.

Mr. RAWLINS.   Mr. President--

The PRESIDING OFFICER. Does the Senator from Illinois yield to the 
Senator from Utah?

Mr. CULLOM.   Certainly.

Mr. RAWLINS. I should like to state to the Senator, from in-formation I have-
I was so informed by a man from those islands- that since the adjournment of 
Congress, on the 4th of March last, there have been imported into those islands 
some 18,000 Chinese.

Mr. CULLOM. That is an entire mistake, unless all the testimony that comes 
to me is untrue. But -there have been some-where between 23,000 and 80,000 
Japanese who were brought into that country or who came in; I do not know 
whether they were brought in or not.

Mr. PLATT of Connecticut. And we have no law against the coming of 
Japanese.

Mr. CULLOM. They could come here just as freely as they go there, if they 
choose.
One of the important provisions of the bill which makes some legislation 
necessary without long delay is the fact that under the annexation act or joint 
resolution it was determined by the President, on the llth of September last, 
that the authorities in the Republic of Hawaii had no power whatever to dispose 
of or make any agreements touching the disposition of the public lands in 
those islands.

Mr. President, before going on again with my remarks regularly, my 
attention has been called to the thirteenth amendment of the Constitution of 
the United States, and I call the attention of the Senator from Connecticut to it. 
It would seem to prohibit the sort of punishment that is provided over there 
for contract laborers in case they violate their contracts. It reads:
Neither slavery nor Involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for 
crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within 
the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
Now, whether that would do away with it or not, I do not know.

Mr. FORAKER. I do not understand that that would do away with contract 
labor if a man wants to contract to labor for a term of years.

Mr. CULLOM. But it would do away, I think, with the penal portion.

Mr. FORAKER.   I suppose he would have a right to do so.

Mr. SPOONER. It certainly would do away with the right to imprison him 
for violating a contract. It would do away with the penal part.

Mr. FORAKER.   It would do away with the penal part of it.

Mr. CULLOM.   That is what I said.
I was referring to the public-land business. The authorities there supposed 
that as the annexation act provided that until Congress shall provide for the 
government of such islands all the civil, judicial, and military powers exercised by 
the officers of the existing government in such islands should be vested in such 
officer or officers and should be exercised in such manner as the President of the 
United States should direct, and the Government of the United States took 
substantially the same view, but upon closer investigation the President came 
to the conclusion that there was no authority whatever left in the republic of 
			Hawaii to deal with the question of the disposition of the public lands.
Senators will see upon reading the joint resolution of annexation that every 
vestige of power apparently (and that was the construction the Attorney-General 
and the President gave to it) was taken away from the authorities of those 
islands ns to public lands, so that they could not under the annexation law do 
any-thing looking to the disposition or use of them even. So the whole territory 
there is held up by the condition that exists, so far as dealing in the lands is 
concerned, either for homesteads or for uses or leases or in any other way. 
Therefore it is important that something shall be done, in the first place, to pass 
a bill getting an organization there and establishing the Territory and putting 
somebody in authority, as well also as to validate the transactions that have 
been in good faith carried on there while the authorities in the island supposed 
that they had the power to go on and sell or lease land or make agreements 
about them as they chose.

Under this provision the President continued the establishment as it existed 
when the annexation act passed, and the result was that the authorities 
supposed that they could go right on as be-fore in the disposition of lands as 
the situation might require. The result was that sales of land were made, 
though not to any very large extent, agreements were made, leases were made, 
con-tracts .for homesteads were made, and on the date I have indicated-the 
llth of September-an Executive order was made by the President notifying 
the Hawaiian republic that that government had no power to make any sale or 
disposition of the public lands in the islands; and that all contracts or agreements 
for such sale or other disposition of public lands should be discontinued, and 
that the purchaser should be notified that the same were null and void, and any 
consideration paid to the legal authorities on account thereof should be 
refunded.

This order put a sudden stop to all transactions touching in any way the public 
lands or realty of the islands, and greatly embarrassed the people thereby, so 
that the representatives of that government have strongly appealed to Congress 
to pass some act giving relief, and the committee has placed in the bill under 
consideration an amendment which reads as follows:

That all sales, grants, leases, and other disposition of the public domain 
and agreements concerning the same, and all franchises granted by the Ha-
waiian government in conformity with the laws of Hawaii prior to the llth 
day of September, 1899, are hereby ratified and confirmed.
That is made for the purpose of curing the situation and con-firming the 
contracts that have been made. Senators will find the document in the 
Document Room, I suppose, which gives in detail every single transaction that 
has been made by that government or its officers in reference to the lands 
referred to.

This provision is believed to be right for the reason that every transaction 
which has taken place on the part of the Government there has been examined, 
and the committee have found no reason against confirming the agreements 
which have been made in connection with the lands of that Territory.
Grants were made of 254 parcels of land, which included 15,334 acres, valued 
at seventy-eight thousand and odd dollars. Of this area, however, about 8,000 
acres were granted for land patents made in pursuance of agreements entered 
into before the act of annexation, and 4,500 acres were granted under the right 
of purchase lease system, and the applicants for these lands were residents in nearly 
every case who desired to improve the lands and acquire homesteads, etc.
The committee therefore believed that the sales made after the annexation of 
the islands and before the President's order should be ratified, because they 
were all made in good faith and in the interest of the growth and increased 
wealth of the islands.

The annexation act relative to public lands, as the Senate will remember, 
provided that all revenue from or proceeds of such lands, except as regards 
such part thereof as might be used or occupied for civil and military or naval 
purposes of the United States, or assigned for the use of the local government, 
should be used solely for the benefit of the inhabitants of the Hawaiian

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