Imatges de pàgina
PDF
EPUB

commercial suicide. The folly perished by its own silliness within a fortnight, but it has been duly followed by other follies, like the Anti-Dumping bill, which has been received with the same complacent imbecility. Cabinet responsibility has ceased to exist, the safeguards of the constitution have gone one by one; ministers have declined into mere clerks, responsible, not to Parliament, but to their chief; treasury control has vanished from finance, and an orgy of unchecked extravagance runs riot through the departments; the benches of the House are crowded with placemen, for whom new offices have been created in such abundance that Mr. George can vote down the feeble opposition with his salaried supporters alone. We are in the presence of an experiment in personal government which would have been unthinkable a decade

ago.

Two issues will show how completely Parliament has abdicated. The story of the events in Ireland during the past year has no parallel in our annals for more than a century. The facts, denied or travestied with impudent effrontery by Sir Hamar Greenwood, are no longer in doubt. Every day adds its dreadful chapter to an indictment such as no civilized government in modern times has been subjected to. In other and better days one incident of the thousand that have occurred would have stung Parliament to an indignant anger that would have swept the government that authorized it from office. One has only to invoke the great name of Gladstone to appreciate the moral death that has fallen upon an institution that sits day by day and month by month in guilty and approving complicity with the chief authors of this indelible crime.

Or take the enormous disaster that has paralyzed industrial England this summer. Whatever share of responsibility the unions have for that catas

trophe, it is small in comparison with the share of the government. They made vast profits by controlling the coal-trade, and used them to conceal the deficiency in their accounts. Nothing was set aside from the coal profits for the purpose of restoring the trade to normal conditions when the slump came. It came as the result, largely, of Mr. George's surrender to the French demands at Spa, which glutted France with German coal and brought about the collapse of the English coal-trade. And with this collapse, almost at a moment's notice, coal was decontrolled, and the miner was left to bear the whole burden of the government's gross improvidence. The wrong was open and palpable, but the House of Commons, in this as in every other crucial test, abdicated all its functions of criticism and appeasement. It was plainly in sympathy with the idea of using the occasion to destroy organized Labor, at whatever cost to the community. Probably the idea will prevail. Labor may be left beaten, impoverished, and sullen. But in thus destroying the last element of confidence among the working-classes in its good faith, Parliament will have suffered no less heavy a blow.

The future is incalculable. Parliamentary government, of course, there will continue to be; but whether Parliament can recover from the atrophy of years of war and the ignominy of years of peace to anything approaching the prestige of other days is more than doubtful. The rot has gone far, and we are in the presence of disruptive forces which cannot be measured. The Cæsarism of Mr. Lloyd George on the one hand, and the challenge of direct action on the other, seem to be crushing the institution between the hammer and the anvil. Apart from the abnormal happenings of the past seven years, the social and industrial changes of the last

generation have foreshadowed a shaping of the machine of government. Decentralization is in the air, and the demand for an instrument less remote and cumbrous, more sensitive and immediately responsive to local needs, is increasingly made.

The universal loss of faith-in men, in institutions, in creeds, in theories which is the devastating product of the war has touched nothing, not even the Church, more blightingly than it has

touched Parliament. It would have suffered less had there been a great moral influence, to which the constitutional idea was as sacred as it was to Hampden, or Burke, or Gladstone, in control of affairs when the tempest came. But the upheaval of the war left it the sport of a nimble genius to whom the soul of Parliament is nothing and the manipulation of mob emotion through the press the only vehicle of statesmanship.

THE JAPANESE IN HAWAII

BY WILLIAM HARDING CARTER

THE recent census shows that, out of a total population of 255,912 in the Hawaiian Islands, 109,269 are Japanese. The increase in Japanese population since 1910 is 29,594, or 37.1 per cent, compared with 18,564 or 30.4 per cent during the preceding decade. The disproportionate number of Japanese in comparison with that of other nationalities in the islands constitutes an intricate and perplexing problem, and a knowledge of the history of Japanese immigration is essential to any proper consideration of the situation.

Diplomatic relations between Japan and Hawaii began with a treaty of amity and commerce in 1871. Scarcity of agricultural labor in Hawaii caused Honorable Charles R. Bishop, Minister of Foreign Affairs, to take up with the Hawaiian consul in Tokyo the subject of an arrangement for obtaining laborers from Japan; but nothing came of it until King Kalakaua visited Japan, in 1881, when the Hawaiian Minister of

Immigration, Honorable William Nevins Armstrong, initiated negotiations with the Japanese government on the subject of emigration of laborers from Japan to Hawaii.

In 1883 Colonel C. P. Iaukea was accredited to the Court of Japan as Minister Plenipotentiary, for the special purpose of arranging for Japanese immigration, and was instructed by the Hawaiian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Honorable Walter Murray Gibson, in this remarkable manner:

'You will please impress upon the mind of the Minister the very exceptional character of these proposals, and the evidence they afford of the high value His Majesty's government places upon the friendly alliance between this country and Japan, and upon the Japanese race as a repopulating element.'

Later, under date of July 22, 1885, Mr. Gibson wrote to Count Inouye:

'I desire in the first place to assure Your Excellency that, owing to the

strong desire of Hawaii to settle upon her soil a kindred and kindly people like the Japanese, this government is most anxious to meet the views and requirements of Japan on all points.'

Under date of January 21, 1886, the Hawaiian Consul-General at Tokyo, Mr. R. W. Irwin, wrote to Count Inouye: 'I accept unreservedly the terms and conditions laid down in Your Excellency's communication of yesterday, and I am prepared to sign the immigration convention.'

The Hawaiian Minister of Foreign Affairs, under date of March 5, 1886, wrote to Count Inouye: 'Mr. Irwin unreservedly accepted these stipulations, and I have now the honor to accept his engagement and to confirm on the part of His Majesty's government the several subsidiary agreements referred to, in so far as may be consonant with the constitution of the kingdom and His Majesty's treaty obligations with foreign powers.'

Count Okuma in reply informed Mr. Irwin: 'I accept your assurances in these regards, as well as other particulars specified in your communication, as an authorized statement of the obligations which your government assumes in the premises, and I shall so regard the understanding as binding on our respective governments, subject to the right of revoking same, either in whole or in part, which is specifically reserved to me.'

In 1885 there were less than fifty Japanese in Hawaii; but under the encouragement of the terms of the treaty, the number increased to twenty thousand in ten years, at which time Japan demanded the exclusion of any more Chinese laborers.

Foreseeing future complications, the Constitution of 1887 was made to limit the franchise to 'every male resident of the Kingdom of Hawaiian, of American or European birth or descent, who shall

have taken an oath to support the constitution and laws, and shall know how to read or write either the Hawaiian, English, or some European language.'

In the following year, 1888, demands for the franchise for the Japanese began, and continued, as a diplomatic bone of contention along the line of favored-nation clauses, until 1893, when Mr. Fujii, Consul-General, made a categorical demand upon President Dole for the granting of the franchise by the Provisional Government-which had superseded the Monarchy - to all Japanese in Hawaii, including field-laborers brought under contract, over whom the Japanese government retained control by withholding 25 per cent of their wages.

President Dole explained that there could be no foundation in law, reason, or the usages of nations for one nation to demand of another, as a right, permission for its subjects to cast off their allegiance and acquire citizenship in another country. The relation of sovereign and subject, state and citizen, comprises an obligation between the governing authority and the individual; otherwise, an overcrowded country could unload its surplus population upon a smaller country, and by the utilization of the enforced franchise eventually and legally absorb the smaller country. This, in the last analysis, would result from the democratic theory that government should follow from the consent of the governed.

Following the establishment of the Republic of Hawaii, the immigration convention lapsed, but Japanese continued to arrive as free immigrants in greater numbers than before, 5129 having arrived in 1896. Matters were reaching a serious condition by reason of the heavy immigration. It was necessary to end a situation which threatened to jeopardize the continued development of Hawaii along Anglo-Saxon

lines; and under the terms of the general statutes of Hawaii nearly 1500 Japanese who arrived were denied entrance.

The native Hawaiian population has been disappearing in about the same ratio in which that of the Japanese has increased. Some of the early explorers estimated the native population of the group of islands as high as 250,000; but in 1832 a census was taken, and showed only 130,313. Twenty years later the population had dwindled to 71,019, of whom 2119 were foreigners. Improved agricultural conditions, incident to the reciprocity treaty with the United States, turned the tide, and in 1896 the total population was 109,020, of whom only 39,504 were Hawaiians. The census of 1910 showed only 26,041 Hawaiians, and the new census, that of 1920, shows that the number of natives has declined to 23,723.

While the native Hawaiian race is steadily disappearing, it still exercises power in local political matters through the considerable number of half-castes, born of intermarriages of whites and Chinese with Hawaiians, who now number 18,027 and are steadily increasing. There is practically none of the populating by mixing of races, anticipated when the Japanese were invited to settle in the islands. The Japanese men

VOL. 128-NO. 2

B

marry only Japanese women, and their children are habitually registered as Japanese with officials of their own government. A large proportion of them are sent back to Japan for part of their education. The younger children attend both the public schools of Hawaii and private Japanese schools. The number of Japanese women in Hawaii has increased rapidly, the ratio of women to men having nearly doubled since 1900,- and now is 42.7 per cent. The Japanese have increased in number since the census of 1910 by 29,599, and with Filipinos comprise three fourths of the total increase.

The main elements of population, other than Hawaiians and Japanese, are Chinese, Portugese, Filipinos, Porto Ricans, and Spaniards. Americans, British and Germans have been more powerful in commercial and financial interests than in numbers.

The islands are fertile, their location is of immense and growing importance, and altogether they constitute a vital element in the future problems of the Pacific. The United States arrived at their possession through a process of stumbling, and doubtless the great problems arising from the commercial and strategic position of the islands will be met in the same way.

ROOT, HOG, OR DIE

THE NEW ENGLANDER AND HIS RAILROADS

BY PHILIP CABOT

CHEAP, efficient transportation is the life-blood of New England. Located at the extreme northeastern corner of the country, it has been, since the death of the China trade, as dependent on its railroads as man upon his food. Without them we die, and yet for twenty years a process of decay has been going on stealing over us like creeping paralysis, but so gradually that for many years it passed almost unnoticed. Ten years ago rumblings and cracks in the walls gave us warning, however, of the collapse which has now occurred. To-day the New England railroads not only are bankrupt, but seem bankrupt beyond repair. Faced with this condition at a time when war had raised the pressure on our whole industrial system to a point never before reached, the manufacturer and distributer turned to the motor-truck, as the only possible avenue of escape; with the result that, in a brief five years, our main radial highways have been converted into railroad rights of way, and are now choked with heavy traffic for which they were never designed.

Every abuse carries its penalty. The penalty for this abuse of our roads will be a heavy one, which the tax-payer must pay. The Commonwealth of Massachusetts has spent more than $25,000,000 of the tax-payers' money in road-construction, much of which has

I

already been ground to powder under the wheels of the five-ton truck; and the damage must to-day be repaired at perhaps double the former cost. Our State tax has mounted in recent years by leaps and bounds; the contribution of the truck-owner to the cost of roadconstruction is so trivial, that most of the burden will fall upon the tax-payer, on whose now over-loaded back a huge additional levy is apparently about to fall at the very moment when he is expecting relief. And make no mistake as to who must bear the burden. The old notion that a tax could be pinned upon one class has vanished into thin air. We now realize that it is not the capitalist who pays the tax, or the manufacturer. It is the man in the street who pays the tax, in the increased cost of everything he buys. He pays the bill for every waste of public money.

At the present time 2,000,000 tonmiles of freight are transported annually by truck;' and five years hence, if the growth continues, the figure will be 60,000,000.

Apparently the business community has come to the conclusion that the motor-truck is to replace the railroad for freight traveling 100 miles or less, and is developing its business along these lines. The decision is a vital one, which must rest, one would suppose, on some well-matured plan, the practica

« AnteriorContinua »