e by the population of Hawaii were it a democratic commonwealth, which it essentially is not. Much of the stock in these corporations is owned in small lots by members of the small business and professional classes. The larger blocks are held by families who, earlier in the game, ran their small plantations for themselves, but who learned that they could not do it so well and so profitably as the corporations, which, with centralized management, could hire far better brains for the entire operation of the industry, from planting to marketing, than was possessed by the heads of the families. As a result, absentee ownership or landlordship has come about. Finding the work done better for them than they could do it themselves, they prefer to live in their Honolulu and seaside and mountain homes, to travel much, and to develop a cosmopolitanism and culture that never misses shocking the traveler or newcomer with surprise. All of which makes this class in Hawaii as cosmopolitan as any class to be found the world over. Of course, there are notable exceptions to this practice of absentee landlordism, and such men run their own plantations and corporations and are active as sugar factors and in the management of the Planters’ Association.
Yet will I dare to assert that no owning class on the mainland is so conscious of its social responsibility as is this owning class of Hawaii, and especially that portion of it which has descended out of the old missionary stock. Its charities, missions, social settlements, kindergartens, schools, hospitals, homes, and other philanthropic enterprises are many; its activities are unceasing; and some of its members contribute from twenty-five to fifty per cent of their incomes to the work for the general good.
But all the foregoing, it must be remembered, is not democratic nor communal, but is distinctly feudal. The coolie and peasant labor possesses no vote, while Hawaii is after all only a territory, its governor appointed by the President of the United States, its one delegate sitting in Congress at Washington but denied the right to vote in that body. Under such conditions, it is patent that the small class of large landowners finds it not too difficult to control the small vote in local politics. Some of the large land-owners are Hawaiian or part Hawaiian, as are practically all the smaller land-owners. And these and the land-holding whites are knit together by a common interest, by social equality, and, in many cases, by the closer bonds of affection and blood relationship.
Interesting, even menacing, problems loom large for Hawaii in the not distant future. Let but one of these be considered, namely, the Japanese and citizenship. Granting that no Japanese immigrant can ever become naturalized, nevertheless remains the irrefragable law and fact that every male Japanese, Hawaii-born, by his birth is automatically a citizen of the United States. Since practically every other person in all Hawaii is Japanese, it is merely a matter of time when the Hawaii-born Japanese vote will not only be larger than any other Hawaiian vote, but will be practically equal to all other votes combined. When such time comes, it looks as if the Japanese will have the dominant say in local politics. If Hawaii should get statehood, a Japanese governor of the State of Hawaii would be not merely probable but very possible.
One feasible way out of the foregoing predicament would be never to strive for statehood but to accept a commission government, said commission to be appointed by the federal government. Yet would remain the question of control in local politics. The Japanese do not fuse any more than do they marry out of their race. The total vote other than Japanese is split into the two old parties. The Japanese would constitute a solid Japanese party capable of outvoting either the Republican or Democratic parties. In the meantime the Hawaii-born Japanese population grows and grows.
In passing it may be significantly noted that while the Chinese, Filipinos, and Portuguese flock enthusiastically into the National