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labor should be ten for the first five days of the week, with a half holiday on Saturday, until August 1, 1902, after which the hours of labor were to be nine daily, with a half holiday on Saturday during June, July, and August, and the shops to close at 4 P. M. on the remaining Saturdays of the year. All overtime was to be paid according to the demands of the journeymen. The annual holiday was conceded without specifying when it should be taken. These propositions were presented to the journeymen and rejected within fifteen minutes. The chairman of their committee suggested to the chairman of the masters' committee that if the propositions just rejected were made to go into operation July 15, instead of August 1, he was quite sure they would be accepted by the journeymen, as they deemed a month's time enough for the masters to notify their patrons of the new schedule. Upon this, however, the masters could come to no agreement. But the larger shops, anxious to concede the demands of the journeymen and begin work on Monday, June 16, decided to act individually. Nor were threats of penalty for so doing effective. Finally, to prevent a breakup of the masters' union itself, it was necessary to pass a resolution that no fines or penalties should be imposed upon those masters who wished to sign the agreement with the journeymen and begin work. But they were urged to do with as few men as possible, so as to compel as many journeymen as possible to remain out of employment. It was decided that the demands of the journeymen should not be signed by the president and secretary, but each master left to act for himself. The result was that the agreement was soon signed by all of the shops that had been in favor of doing so from the first; and a majority of the others soon found themselves obliged to do the same in order to hold their trade, as no shoeing had been done in the city for a week. Thus the short-sighted policy of those masters who favored holding out resulted only in keeping their shops closed without profit, whereas they might have gained a month at the old schedule, had they been willing to allow their own recommendations to go into effect July 15.

FRANK E. HORACK.

THE UNIVERSITY OF IOWA.

AN INQUIRY INTO THE CAUSES OF THE DECREASE

OF THE HAWAIIAN PEOPLE.

These

"BE fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth.” words, according to the philosophical writer of the first chapter of Genesis, the Creator addressed to the first parents of the human race. One of the most notable exceptions to the law of life here implied may be observed in the later history of the Hawaiian Islands. The Hawaiian people, after multiplying, and replenishing their islands in the Pacific, have been decreasing steadily for more than one hundred years.

When Captain Cook discovered Hawaii, 1778-79, he and Mr. King estimated the population at 400,000. When Vancouver, who had accompanied Cook, revisited the islands in 1792, "the depopulation throughout the group. struck him painfully." The missionaries arrived in 1820. Three years later they estimated the number of inhabitants at 142,000. In 1832 the first official census was taken, and from that time the census returns are as follows:

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58,765 51,481 47,508 44,232 40,622 39,504

The number of the native population is not given in the census returns of 1900 thus far available; it has been estimated at 38,000.

The decrease of the Hawaiian people has been dealt with in almost every book that has been written about the islands. Of these numerous treatments that of Professor Blackman in The Making of Hawaii, although in some respects defective—owing apparently to the author's overconfidence in his authorities— is undoubtedly the best. A number of interesting articles have also appeared on the subject, notably one by Rev. A. Bishop in

the Hawaiian Spectator, 1838; one by David Malo, the native historian, Hawaiian Spectator, 1839; and another by Rev. S. E. Bishop read before the Social Science Association of Honolulu in 1888.

As the causes of this decrease have varied at different times, I shall deal with them during two separate periods, taking 1820, the year of the arrival of the missionaries, as the dividing line.

In the first period, from the discovery of Cook to the arrival of the missionaries, the decrease was not so great as the figures just given would indicate. The estimate of King is now universally conceded to have been too high; 300,000 would have been more correct. When Vancouver returned in 1792, the natives did not gather around the ships in such numbers as formerly, partly because white men had somewhat ceased to be objects of curiosity, and partly because Vancouver, refusing to sell firearms, was not favorably received. Hence the difference in population seemed to him to be greater than it really was. Nevertheless, the decrease during the first period must have been excessive. The chief causes were three: infanticide, war, and pestilence.

I. Among every people, whether savage or civilized, infanticide to a greater or less extent has always existed-some small communities, perhaps, for short periods, excepted. But among the Hawaiians it became a social custom, for the following reasons: In former times the Polynesian race inhabited many small islands in the Pacific. Living in a state of nature, in a congenial climate, they were a vigorous people, peaceable, and practically free from disease. They soon stocked their island homes. The only alternatives then before them-being destitute of metals or the physical conditions of progress-were famine, inter-tribal warfare, or limitation of births. The first meant extinction. The second was tried, with greater or less success. And the third was generally adopted as the method best suited to the temperament of the people and to the conditions of their existence. It became a social institution, essential, in that state of society, to race-preservation.

It might be supposed, perhaps, that after the settlement in Hawaii infanticide would cease, on these islands, as being no

longer necessary. But it must be remembered that the immigrants had the new land to subdue, that they had very inferior tools and no possible way, from their own resources, of acquiring better ones—and that they had a most oppressive system of government. Consequently the majority of the people would still find that life was by no means easy. Moreover, infanticide was now a long-established custom. It probably ceased among the chiefs at this time, for they could get the means of subsistence without difficulty. But among the lower classes, while its frequency might diminish, it would not be likely to disappear entirely.

The missionaries have usually estimated that among the common people about two-thirds of all the children were put to death, either before or after birth. But again it should be noted that when the missionaries landed society was in an abnormal, if not degenerate, state. The islanders had just emerged from the Kamehameha wars. Many thousands of the inhabitants had been killed by the weapons supplied by traders from Christian countries. Conquest was followed by confiscation. And war had brought forth its natural children—poverty, vice, and misery. It is not to be supposed that in the normal state of Hawaiian society infanticide was practiced to anything like the extent represented by the missionaries. Cook does not seem to have been aware of its existence; and regarding parental love he testifies: "It was pleasing to observe with what affection the women managed their infants, and with what alacrity the men contributed their assistance to such a tender office." The fact that infanticide was practiced is perhaps a proof of the fertility, peaceableness, and healthiness of the people, rather than of their indolence or wantonness.

2. In early times wars were evidently not frequent in Hawaii, or else not severe. The natives in disposition were extremely mild, like the climate in which they lived. Besides, they had practically no destructive weapons. But Cook's seamen taught them the effectiveness of firearms and the superiority of civilized warfare to savage. Always quick to learn, so far as they had opportunities, the Hawaiians soon adopted the new mode of

fighting. Then their wars became bloody, and helped materially to diminish the population.

3. Knowledge, like that acquired in the Garden of Eden, has ever been of two kinds, good and evil. In like manner, civilization has always carried death as well as enlightenment to primitive peoples. Besides useful metals and domestic animals, pestilence soon found entrance to the "Paradise of the Pacific." In what way this species of Satan on several occasions gained admittance, we are not fully informed. Rev. J. G. Paton, in his autobiography, tells how in 1860 pestilence was introduced to one of the islands of the New Hebrides. Three ship captains, after putting on shore at different ports of Tanna four young men ill with measles, invited a chief, Kapuku, on board one of the vessels, promising to give him a present. They then confined him for twenty-four hours, without food, in the hold among measles-stricken patients, after which they put him on shore with the disease as the only present. This gift was as fatal to the Tannese as was the wooden horse to the Trojans. "The measles thus introduced spread fearfully, and decimated the population of the island. In some villages men, women, and children were stricken down together, and none could give food or water to the sick or bury the dead." There is little doubt that pestilence has, at times, found entrance to Hawaii in a somewhat similar manner, and for a similar purpose-"to sweep [the inhabitants] away and let white men occupy the soil.” In 1804 an epidemic, commonly thought to have been the plague, was brought to the islands by foreigners—though in what particular manner is not now known. An epidemic when it makes its first appearance in a community is most fatal, owing partly to the susceptibility of the people and partly to their inexperience in treating it. Concerning this one David Malo related: "In the reign of Kamehameha, from the time I was born until I was nine years old, the pestilence visited the Hawaiian Islands, and the majority of the people from Hawaii to Niihau died."

Under pestilence may be included venereal disease, because of its ravages and the rapidity with which it spread when first introduced. It was unknown among the natives until 1778.

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