tory of the United States could so exotic a spectacle be witnessed. And unforgettable were the flower-garlanded Hawaiians, the women pa’u riders on their lively steeds with flowing costumes that swept the ground, toddling Japanese boys and girls, lantern processions straight out of old Japan, colossal dragons from the Flowery Empire, and Chinese school girls, parading two by two in long winding columns, bare-headed, their demure black braids down their backs, slimly graceful in the white costumes of their foremothers. At the same time, while the streets stormed with confetti and serpentines tossed by the laughing races of all the world, in the throne room of the old palace (now the Executive Building) was occurring an event as bizarre in its own way and equally impressive. Here, side by side, the two high representatives of the old order and the new held reception. Seated, was the aged Queen Llliuokalani, the last reigning sovereign of Hawaii ; standing beside her was Lucius E. Pinkham, New England born, the Governor of Hawaii. A quarter of a century before, his brothers had dispossessed her of her kingdom; and quite a feather was it in his cap for him to have her beside him that night, for it was the first time in that quarter of a century that any one had succeeded in winning her from her seclusion to enter the throne-room.
AN EARTHLY PARADISE
And about them, among brilliantly uniformed army and navy officers from generals and admirals down, moved judges and senators, sugar kings and captains of industry, the economic and political rulers of Hawaii, and many of them, they and their women, intermingled descendants of the old chief stocks and of the old missionary and merchant pioneers.
And what more meet than that in Hawaii, the true Aloha-land which has welcomed and loved all wayfarers from all other lands, that the Pan-Pacific movement should have originated. This had its inception in the mind of Mr. Alexander Hume Ford — he of Outrigger Club fame who resurrected the sports of surf-boarding and surf -canoeing at Waikiki. Hands-Around-the-Pacific, he calls the movement; and already these friendly hands are reaching out and clasping all the way from British Columbia to Panama, from New Zealand to Australia and Oceanica, and on to Java, the Philippines, China and Japan, and around and back again to Hawaii, the Cross-Roads of the Pacific and the logical heart and home and center of the movement.
Hawaii is a Paradise — and I can never cease proclaiming it; but I must append one word of qualification: Hawaii is a paradise for the well-to-do. It is not a paradise for the unskilled laborer from the mainland, nor for the person without capital from the mainland. The one great industry of the islands is sugar. The unskilled labor for the plantations is already here. Also, the white unskilled laborer, with a higher standard of living, cannot compete with coolie labor, and, further, the white laborer cannot and will not work in the canefields.
For the person without capital, dreaming to start on a shoestring and become a capitalist, Hawaii is the last place in the world. It must be remembered that Hawaii is very old . . . comparatively. When California was a huge cattle ranch for hides and tallow (the meat being left where it was skinned), Hawaii was publishing newspapers and boasting schools of higher learning. During the early years of the gold rush, before the soil of California was scratched with a plow, Hawaii kept a fleet of ships busy carrying her wheat, and flour, and potatoes to California, while California was sending her children down to Hawaii to be educated. The shoestring days are past. The land and industries of Hawaii are owned by old families and large corporations, and Hawaii is only so large.
But the homesteader may object, saying that he has read the reports of the millions of acres of government land in Hawaii which are his for the homesteading. But he must remember that the vastly larger portion of this government land is naked lava rock and not worth ten cents a square mile to a homesteader, and that much o