Home: The Annexation Of Hawaii: A Collection Of Document
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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.