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3713
from the date such employment actually begins, and also proper employment for 
the wife and grown-up children of said laborer. The employer guarantees to the 
said laborer wages at the rate of $18 for each month of twenty six days' labor 
performed, and to his wife and grown-up children, if they desire to work, wages 
as follows: To wives and daughters 20 years old, for labor performed, wages at 
the rate of 40 cents per day; daughters from 18 to 20 years, 35 cents per day; 
daughters from 16 to 18 years, 30 cents per day; daughters from 14 to 16 years, 
25 cents per day; sons from 16 to 18 years, 50 cents per day; sons from 14 to 16 
years 40 cents per day; sons from 12 to 14 years, 25 cents per day. And besides, 
the laborer is to have, free of charge, for himself and family unfurnished 
lodgings, also fuel and water for cooking, and medical attendance and medicine. 
During the continuance of this contract the said laborer shall be free of all 
personal taxes.   The employer guarantees to him and his family the full equal, 
and perfect protection of the laws of the Hawaiian Islands, also free primary 
instructions in the public schools to his minor children. The said laborer, in 
consideration of the stipulations hereinbefore mentioned to be kept and 
performed by the employer, covenants and agrees as follows: To proceed to 
Honolulu by the vessel provided for him in accordance with this agreement. On 
arrival at Honolulu to accept such employment as the employer may, under this 
contract, assign to him. During the continuance of this contract, being the full 
period of three years from the date such employment actually begins, to fulfill 
all the conditions of this agreement and to diligently and faithfully perform 
all lawful and proper labor and to obey all lawful commands of the employer, 
his agents, or overseers, and to work during the night and rest during the day. 
it called upon to do so, and to work on all days which are not holidays and as 
such recognized by the Hawaiian government, except when said laborer may 
be employed on domestic service, in which case the usual and indispenable work 
shall be done on these days also. A day's labor shall mean ten hours' actual 
work in the fields or twelve hours' actual work in the sugar factory, the hours 
not being continuous, but allowing the necessary time for taking food and 
rest.   The hours of labor are counted from the moment regularly established 
for the departure to the work in the factory or the fields, and the laborer must 
not exceed the time reasonably necessary to arrive there.   And twenty-six 
days' actual work as aforesaid shall constitute one month's labor. In witness 
whereof, we have hereunto set our hands, in duplicate, at Bremen, the day and 
year first above written. TEPER YACOB. CARL MUNCHP.
These contracts are acknowledged, and across the acknowledgment 
of Jacob Teper is this record of conviction: Oahu Sugar Co., Ltd., vs. 
Jacob Teper.    Deserting contract service. Found guilty and ordered to 
return to work.   Costs, $3.20. W. L. WILCOX, District Magistrate, Oahu. 
HONOLULU, Nov. 11. 1898.
I have read the contract that binds these unfortunates to slavery. They 
are all alike.   They are the same this year as they were last year 
and the year before, printed in three languages. Here is the law that 
has governed since annexation: SEC. 1384. If any person, lawfully bound to 
service, shall willfully absent himself from such service, any district magistrate, 
upon complaint made, under oath, may issue a warrant to apprehend such 
person and bring him before the said magistrate; and if the complaint shall be 
maintained, the magistrate shall order such offender to be restored to his 
master, and he shall be compelled to serve the remainder of the time for 
which he originally contracted.             SEC. 1385. If any such person shall 
refuse to serve for the term of his contract, his master may apply to any district 
magistrate where he may reside, who shall be authorized, by warrant or 
otherwise, to send for the person so refusing, and, if such refusal be persisted 
in, to commit such person to prison, there to remain at hard labor until he will 
consent to serve according to law; and in case such person bound as aforesaid 
shall have returned to the service of such master in obedience to such order of 
such magistrate and shall again willfully absent himself from such service 
without the leave of his master, such district magistrate may fine such 
offender for the first offense not exceeding $5 and for the second offense not 
exceeding $10, and in default of payment thereof such offender shall be 
imprisoned at hard labor until such fine is paid, and for every subsequent 
offense thereafter the offender shall be imprisoned at hard labor not 
exceeding three months, and at the expiration of any such imprisonment such 
magistrate shall order such offender to be restored to his master to serve for 
the remainder of such original term of service. SEC. 1386. The magistrate's 
warrant or order, mentioned in section 1384, when directed to any officer or 
other person by name, shall authorize him to convey the offender to the place 
of residence of the master, although it may be in some other island of the 
republic. SEC. 1387. All the costs incurred in any process against a servant shall 
be paid, the first instance, by the complainant, and, if the complainant shall be 
sustained, the master shall have judgment and execution thereof against the 
offending servant.
   This good minister went about and raised funds to purchase the 
freedom of Teper, who was an Israelite. Here is the money paid for 
the purchase of a slave's freedom: HONOLULU, HAWAIIAN ISLANDS, July 3, 1899. 
Received of Rev. Levy the sum of $120 for release of contract of Jacob Teper, 
contract laborer for Oahu Sug. Co. H. HACKFELD & CO., LIMITED. But what 
became of the other 85 prisoners?   They remained in prison till 
William H.  Marshall, of the Sunday Volcano, denounced the 
infamous system, exposed that one Hackfeld was acting as consul for 
Austria-Hungary and at the same time for himself, and as agent for 
other sugar planters and mill owners. This worthy representative of 
the favored Hawaiian system of slave labor, without conscientious 
compunctions, served in the dual capacity of agent for the slaves 
who came from that country and for the masters who bound them 
and sent them to prison. He was forced to resign, and his company 
- the Hackfeld Company, Limited - was finally forced to release 
these prisoners.   Marshall, who rained fire upon these methods and 
the ones engaged in them, was thrown in prison on some charge 
to atone for his

offense, and was only able to secure his release by giving an unnatural 
bond, and on appeal his case stands without hope of trial, but with 
prospects of dismissal. Such is the encouragement given to this odious 
system by those in power officially and otherwise in Hawaii, both 
before annexation and after it became part of the United States, and 
the same encouragement has been given by the same powers that be, 
down to this very hour. Three distinct powers have encouraged the 
importation to and use of contract labor in Hawaii since annexation: 
First, the navigation corporations; Second, the plantation and mill 
owners, and Third, the United States - Hawaiian officers in stations 
giving them opportunity to encourage it - from Sanford B. Dole down 
to the most minor officer. From the third class I do not except the 
judiciary.   For proof of these statements I refer to the report of the 
commission which was appointed by the resolution of annexation, 
and to the advance sheets of consular reports found in February, 
1900, Consular Report, page 223, dated Januarys, 1900, containing a 
report of Mr. Sewall, former minister of the United States to Hawaii, 
and now special agent of the United States at Honolulu, and by infor-
mation from Mr. Joshua K. Brown, United States Chinese inspector 
at Honolulu, and from the report of the United States and Hawaii 
bureau of immigration, J. A. King, president, and Wray Taylor, 
secretary, and Charles A. Peterson, inspector of immigration, and 
to the decisions of Judge Frear and the other judges of all the courts. 
The whole official life of Sanford B. Dole has been an indorsement of 
contract labor.   He was one of the commissioners who made this 
report, and the traces of his dominant handiwork is found through its 
pages.   The commissioners met the government officers.   Dole was 
one.   They met the nobility, the men with special privileges.   Did 
they meet the man with the hoe?   Did they meet the contract 
laborers?   No; Commissioner Dole led them not by the disturbed 
waters, but the government officials led them "into the green 
pastures beside the still waters."   If it had been otherwise, if the 
American members of that commission saw the contract-labor system 
and saw the prisons whore compliance was enforced, which I can not 
affirm or deny, they should at once have returned to their own free-
labor country and passed a law to protect labor, and to stop the 
thousands who have been pouring in at the command of the 
corporation shipowners and the masters of those islands. What more 
was to be expected of the Hawaiian representatives one hat 
commission?   President Dole's whole official life under the 
Hawaiian laws and under the laws of the United States has been 
intimately associated with contract labor.   The other, Judge Frear's, 
career likewise has been a sanction of it even in judicial station, both 
as Hawaiian judge and as a judge since annexation. These two are a 
part of an administration under United States laws since annexation 
that is styled by those not in the circle as "Dole's family compact." 
Another member of this "Dole family compact" is Minister of 
Finance S. M. Damon, who, after annexation, imported 17 Italian 
contract laborers via Canada, and now has those 17 Italians working as 
contract laborers on his estate within sight of Honolulu. Hawaiian 
dispatches report that early in November President Dole received a 
letter from Mr. Damon containing a report of his trip to Italy, whose 
language he speaks, in the interest of contract-labor importations, and 
that his contemplated visit to Portugal was in the same interest. Mr. 
Damon's connection with this slave-labor system while in official life 
and since annexation has been open and notorious.   It will be 
remembered that this worthy representative of the contract-labor system 
and of the United States and of Hawaii last November resigned by a 
direct cable to President McKinley from Italy. The dispatch said, 
further, that his resignation was a surprise to official circles in 
Hawaii.   It should not have been.   All knew he was engaged in this 
labor-contract system while he was an official, and if his resignation 
was a surprise the surprise has no doubt abated, as. on his return, he 
was installed in his old position as minister of finance in Hawaii, and 
holds it to-day. These were the officials of Hawaii who accompanied our 
American commissioners to find out from the bound how they liked 
contract labor.   It is difficult to conceive, but the proof is patent, that 
the Americans were hypnotized by the Hawaiians and led away 
from the disagreeable facts of contract labor, cruelty to labor, child 
and woman contract labor, and imprisonment and stripes as a 
penalty for violation of terms of contracts with iron masters, all of 
which were but slightly touched upon in their elaborate report or 
passed over altogether.   The report of Special Agent Sewall, while 
frank and open in many respects, shows an aversion to disagreeable 
exposures.   The Hawaiian members of he commission, through the 
American members, press upon our attention un-American 
slaveholding laws suited only to the system of slavery in those 
islands.

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