Ka Leo o ka Lahui, Volume II, Number 263, 21 August 1891 — Page 4

KA LEO O KA LAHUI.

"E Mau ke Ea o ka Aina i ka Pono."

 

KA LEO.

John E. Bush.

Luna Hooponopono a me Puuku

 

FRIDAY, AUGUST 21, 1891

 

“STILL HARPING ON MY DAUGHTER.”

 

            It would be amusing to read the Bulletin in these days, were it not for the melancholy fact that journalistic dotage is suggested in every original article that it publishes.  IT is not unusual for old men in their dotage to imagine themselves the centres of respective local systems, without who the march of events would suffer paralysis.  So with the poor old Bulletin.   Its reputed editor, somewhere within the supposed confines of that vague something which he is pleased to consider his mind, as corralled the substitutes for two ideas,--one relating to the Queen’s recent tours, the other concerning the magnificence of his own editoral intellect, and the colossal character of the journalistic feats by him performed in Hawaii nei and elsewhere.

 

            As to the second of those topics, it might be the prudish be thought the better plan for the editor to leave the discovery of his genius to others.  But the editor has perhaps read the motto,--“He that bloweth not his own horn, the same shall not be blown.”  And lest no others should chance to discover the gems of thought with which his every literary effort is fairly bedezzined,--lest that soaring sour should be unrecognized by the dull eyes of the vulgar common herd,--or, still worse, lest the editor’s plebian constituents should mistake the soaring angel for a floundering buzzard,--the knight of the quill, who still retains a trace of method in his madness, comes to his own rescue, modestly, but firmly and persistently discovers himself, and saturates his readers, (Heaven help them), with lectures upon the magnificence of his own capacity and career.  He remarks, among other brilliant things, that he has never been under the necessity of begging for editorial contributions.  That is where our friend’s pride clouds his judgment, for wherever he should “beg,” or otherwise obtain editorial contributions from the outer circle, the tastes and interests of his readers would be the gainers. Any change in the literary style or volume of that nondescript mendicant for government “pap,” will be for the better. A professing journalistic whose highest aim is to so preserve the nicety of his balance as to attract the advertising custom of an imbecile and paralytic administration, while avoiding the expression of opinions too favorable to his patrons, has urgent need of his own pen to prate of his own accomplishments and virtues.  The slavery is the “sack” is nowhere more firmly intrenched in Hawaii, than in the Bulletin sanctum.

 

            Upon the somewhat threadbare topic of the Queen’s receptions in the course of her late tours, the Bulletin hedges, at last, behind the equivocal declaration that the hospitality tendered to her Majesty has been unexampled in any former royal tour of the group.  We cheerfully concur in the accuracy of the above, or it shall be construed to mean that no former sovereign of Hawaii was ever received by his own people with such a poverty of good-will and aloha as marked the Queen’s late junkets.  As to the sugar barons, they have axes to grind at the Palace, and have distinguished themselves by the splendor of their entertainments tendered the Queen.  This we have all along declared.  But those gaudy tributes of avarice to a decaying power,--those palpable bids for a Royal license to still further plunder her Majesty’s poor subjects, are a shabby recompense for the apathy toward, or openly expressed, distrust of the Queen and her policy, on the part of the native Hawaiian.  More than that, the Queen herself feels the indifference and hostility of the natives, and not all the palliations that can be injected into the lying accounts of her tours, as published in the missionary and nondescript press of this city, can wholly allay the Royal anxiety on that subject.

 

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THE POOR AGAINST THE RICH.

 

            It is becoming increasingly apparent that the next election campaign in this country will be reduced to an issue of the poor against the rich—the masses against the classes.  This issue would have been fought to a finish long ago, but that, prior to the last session of the Legislature, the wealthy class had succeeded in so retaining the semi-publicity of the ballot as to enable them to dictate and control the votes of their employees and other dependents.  The peculiar laws of the land coup0led with their partial administration in the interst of the rich, and inspired and aided by the unholy and insatiable greed of the wealthy few, practiced upon the poor majority, have thus far contributed to the constant increase in the riches of the few, and the intensification of the poverty of the many.  Now the situation is fast becoming critical.  The sugar barons and their business connections recognize impending disaster in the working of the McKinley Act.  They can no longer with confidence rely upon reaping seventy-seven per cent annual dividends upon investments which pay taxes upon a thirty percent assessment.  Sugar is down.  Bill McKinley, acting patriotically in the interest of his own country, instead of selling out to the Hawaiian sugar ring, knocked the bottom out of our treaty with Uncle Sam, and we are hoka Anglice, “left.”).

 

            So the planters, pure and disinterested patriots that they are, find it necessary to forego their late enormous dividends, and to rigidly retrench, in order to avoid bankruptcy and ruin.  The Queen came generously to the relief of one of them,--a non-resident Yankee, by the way, --and, when he “struck the beach” the other day, on a proposed visit, (?) maternally gathered him up, (he being very small, in more senses than one), and slamned into a “vacant chair” in the cabinet, where his ministerial salary will partially compensate for the evanescent and evanished sugar dividends.  Fortunate little Yankee!  Considerate and generous Sovereign.

 

            By the way it must not be forgotten that “retrenchment,’ as used by the Hawaiian planter means the importation of fresh hordes of Asiatic heathens to till his fields; the promotion of the best specimens of the last importation to positions of greater importance now occupied by higher priced servants; the abolition of the duty on rice, that their slaves may be more cheaply fed, and the capital invested in Hawaiian rice culture be dissipated; the discharge from their employ of the few remaining white men, who demand a rate of wages that will provide a diet better than rice and rats,--and the general undoing and complete impoverishment of the native and white laboring classes.  What do the planters care who may suffer, so long as they succeed?  The degradation of these lovely Isles to a group of coolie camps is the tendency, if no the intention of the sugar ring’s policy.  It will of course be necessary for the barons to retain sufficient white men in the country, (though not in their pay, if it can be avoided), to act in conjunction with such of the natives as can be used for that purpose, in coercing and restraining the Asiatics, when the latter indulge in their perennial riots.  But further than that, the sugar baron has no use for a free white man.  The more the spirit of independence be developed in the “poor white,” the more of a nuisance he becomes to the baron.  The intelligent “poor white” sometimes has the temerity to criticize, and @@@ unpleasant truths about the baron.  If there are two things which the sugar baron hates more cordially than the Devil is said to hate “holy water,”—those two things are truth and criticism, --when levelled against himself.

 

            But if present government forms shall continue to exist till next February, there will be a locking of horns between the baron and the serf,--between the rich and the poor, in which the arrogance of ill gotten wealth will be humbled, and its owners politically extinguished.  The missionary, as a political factor in Hawaii, “must go!”

 

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The “Bulletin” is Mad!

 

            Ha! ha! ha!-the poor mamal who has taken the place of the cat in the Bulletin’s menagerie, is growing wilder than ever over the humble but truly independent Ka Leo.  An old latin proverb has it that, when a man gets angry, it is a sure sign that he is wrong; how full of consternation and venom the Bulletin is, and how conscious of discomfiture (as well as of the correctness of the Leo’s assertions) is sufficiently shown by the town of its editorial in Tuesday’s issue, which claims that the editor of that paper is alone responsible for what appears in it.  This, of course, is a fiction which may hold good legally, and figuratively; but, if applied to a previous lengthy article which the public attributed to either the Post Master General or the Minister of Finance it does not work, for every one in town knows by experience that the present editor of the Bulletin is absolutely incapable of writing any long winded factum of the kind/ and furthermore, the one alluded to had none of the customary Canadian ear-marks.  However, the fact would not be worthy of notice, were it not that it serves as a vehicle for some pent-up bile which finds vent in accusing the Leo of “cowardly attacks!”  This is rather bold, but funny language from that strange combination of cats, kangaroos and beavers, a very “mongrel” combination indeed, whose only characteristic point is their aerobatic hability to stand on a fence “pledged to neither sect or party” with a feline instinct of surely jumping down at the critical time, on the winning side, so as to secure a goodly share of government pap!  In what concerns the public official, who the Bulletin tries to shield, it is yet too early to make up the gentleman’s political balance account; but it can already be said, that he has been weighed and found deficient; he has broken solemn promises, and from his former very look-warm attitude towards the national party, coupled with his present alliance with prominent reformers, it will suffice to say that he is now branded as that kind of a man, which, politically, it is safer to have as an enemy sooner than as a friend, according to this principle that one cannot be betrayed or disappointed by a declared foe.

 

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A BRILLIANT IDEA.

 

            Fiat Sacharrum, Ruat Coelum! It is the first duty of the government to foster our chief industry.  All that we now are and all we hope to be we owe to sugar.  The sugar magnates have long run the government.

            Now when the foundations of the state are shaken by the action of our great and good friend in refusing to contribute some millions a year to our five or six missionary millionairies, something must be done for the relief of capitalists.  The United States gives her planters a bounty in place of the protection of the tariff.  Lets us do likewise.  Let the next Legislature make an appropriation to pay two cents for every pound of sugar exported.  The country ought to show that it is not ungrateful to its noble benefactors.  The white people who are still in the country know the time is at hand when they must make room for Asiatics.  Why should we part in anger?  Better pay this last tribute to High and Mighty Acquisitiveness, and then start anew to find some country where the elements are not owned.  Perhaps there is some remote corner of the globe where the rights of Hogs are not considered sacred, where men may cultivate the soil, enjoy the fruits of his labor and increase, multiply and replenish the earth.

 

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A ROMANCE.

 

The Paradise of the Pacific

OR

The Devil’s Kuleana.

 

(Continued by Uncle Beke.)

 

            It occurred to Nyama that there might be a store or some mere likely place fore obtaining food somewhere else in the hamlet.  In pursuance of this idea he sailed forth after telling Faza his purpose and to await his return.  He passed out of the gate, and back in the direction of Hero to the foot of the cliff.  There he found a small house from whose front the white-wash had been rubbed and which looked with grimy countenance toward the road.  Under the inevitable porch sat two rows of strange figures on the benches on either side of the door.  They were native girls, little and big, and were all attired in a single long gown flowing free from their necks to their heels, and varying in all shades from nearly white to the smutty black of Bowoweean soil and some specimens which seemed to have long ago given up the effort to maintain independence of color.

            Some of them had rather graceful figures and pleasant features, but for the most part their thick lips, great cow eyes and flat noses indicated only an animal existence.

            As Nyama approached the house and passed through the door, he noticed that their faces were disfigured with pimples and the row of bare brown feet were covered with small round ulsers and livid purple-black spots.  Inside he found, as he had anticipated, a stock of merchandise displayed on shelves on their side of the low, small room, and hanging from the ceiling in clusters.  Everything looked old and shoddy.

            A Chinaman sat behind the counter writing in a brown paper book.  A fat slatternly native woman was standing by his side holding in her arms a child, a suckling whose oblique eyes and yellowish skin showed its Chinese affinities.

Nyama examined the stock.  He selected a flannel shirt and a pair of blue overall for himself, and for Faza he found one of those loose Mother-Hubbert’s wrapper which are the national dress in Bowowee.  To these he added several minor articles and a can of meat and one of fruit, also a loaf of bread and some cheese.

            He offered the Chinaman one of the twenty-dollar pieces which the policeman had overlooked in his inner vest pocket.  The celestial looked aghast at the coin; but after some explanation accepted it and returned the change.  Loaded with his purchases Nyama returned to the house and cast them down at Faza’s Feet.  She brightened up a little then said looking at him with a smile full of devotion, “you are so good and kind.”

            Nyama selected those articles that he had brought for himself and went to the stream.  Following it up a little way he came to a little pool among the great bolders out of sight of the road, and casting aside his mudladen clothes he plunged into the clear cool water.  When, after a delightful bath, he began to dress again he abandoned all his muddy garments except only his coat and vest.  He came back to the house again clean, refreshed and hungry.  He told Faza of the pool and advised her to do likewise.  In a quarter of an hour she returned all glowing and gay, her long hair flowing down her back, and both hands engaged in holding up the long blue and white calico wrapper that Nyama had brought for her.  Her little bare feet showed bruised and bleeding now, but she did not notice them as she limped over the gravel of the path.

 

To be Continued.

 

 

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OLELO HOOLAHA.

 

            Owau o ka mea nona na aina o Makaiho, Kamakalalaukalo, Kaluaopalena, ke papa akea aku nei i na mea a pau aole e hele wale maluna o ka aina, a aole hoi e kuai i na loi ai oo a me loi opiopio, me ka hele mua ole mai e kuka pu me a‘u.  O ka poe a pau e kue ana i keia olelo, maluna no o lakou ko lakou poho.   MELE AKONI ROSE.

Aug. 4, 1891.   251  3m-d