pineapples has been successfully carried on, and in the year ending
May 31, 1907, 186,700 cases were exported, being packed in nine
canneries. Oranges, lemons, limes, figs, mangoes, grapes and
peaches, besides a considerable variety of vegetables, are raised
in small quantities for local consumption. In 1909 the exports of
fruits and nuts to the continental United States were valued at
$1,457,644. An excellent quality of sisal is grown. Rubber trees
have been planted with some success, particularly on the eastern
part of the island of Maui; they were not tapped for commercial
use until 1909. In 1907 there were vanilla plantations in the islands
of Oahu and Hawaii. Tobacco of a high grade, especially for
wrappers, has been grown at the Agricultural Experiment Station’s
farm at Hamakua, on the island of Hawaii, where the tobacco is
practically “shade grown” under the afternoon fogs from Mauna
Kea. Cotton and silk culture have been experimented with on the
islands; and the work of the Hawaiian Agricultural Experiment
Station is of great value, in introducing new crops, in improving
old, in studying soils and fertilizers and in entomological research.
Honey is a crop of some importance; in 1908 the yield was about
950 tons of honey and 15 tons of wax. The small islands of Lanai,
Niihau and Kahoolawe are devoted chiefly to the raising of sheep
and cattle—Niihau is one large privately owned sheep-ranch.
There are large cattle-ranches on the islands supplying nearly all
the meat for domestic consumption, and cattle-raising is second in
importance to the sugar industry. It was estimated in 1908 that
there were about 130,500 cattle and about 99,500 sheep on the
islands. The “native” cattle, descended from those left on the
islands by early navigators, are being improved by breeding with
imported Hereford, Shorthorn, Angus and Holstein bulls, the Herefords
being the best for the purpose. In the fiscal year 1908,
359,413 ℔ of wool (valued at $58,133) and 928,599 ℔ of raw hides
(valued at $87,599) were shipped from the Territory to the United
States.
Minerals.—The islands have large (unworked) supplies of pumice, sandstone, sulphur, gypsum, alum and mineral-paint ochres, and some salt, kaolin and sal-ammoniac, but otherwise they are without mineral wealth other than lava rocks for building purposes.
Manufactures.—The manufactures are chiefly sugar, fertilizers, and such products of the foundry and machine shop as are required for the machinery of the sugar factories. Most of the manufacturing industries, indeed, are maintained for supplying the local market, there being only three important exceptions—the manufacture of sugar, the cleaning of coffee and the cleaning and polishing of rice. The manufacture of sugar, which began between 1830 and 1840, has long been much the most important of the manufacturing industries: thus in 1900 the value of the sugar production was $19,254,773, and the total value of all manufactures, including custom work and repairing, was only $24,992,068. Next to sugar, fertilizers were the most important manufactured product, their value being $1,150,625; the products of the establishments for the polishing and cleaning of rice were valued at $664,300. Of the total product in 1900, only 18.5% (by value) is to be credited to the city of Honolulu. The growth of manufacturing is much hampered by the lack of labour. Excellent water power is utilized on the island of Kauai in an electric plant.
Communications.—There are good wagon roads on the islands, some of them macadamized, built of the hard blue lava rock. Hawaii had in 1909 about 200 m. of railway, of which the principal line is that of the Oahu Railway & Land Company (about 89 m.), extending from Honolulu W. and N. along the coast to Kahuku about one-half the distance around Oahu; another line from Kahuku Mill, the most northerly point of the island, S.E. to Honolulu, was projected in 1905; on the island of Hawaii is the Hilo Railroad (about 46 m.), carrying sugar, pineapples, rubber and lumber; other railways are for the most part short lines on sugar estates and in coffee-producing sections of the islands of Hawaii and Maui. Each of the larger islands has one or more ports which a local steamboat serves regularly, and Honolulu has the regular service of seven trans-Pacific lines (the American-Hawaiian Steamship Co., the Canadian-Australian Steamship Co., the Matson Navigation Co., the Oceanic Steamship Co., the Pacific Mail Steamship Co., the Mexican Oriental and the Toyo Kisen Kaisha); it is a midway station for vessels between the United States (mainland) and Australia and Southern Asia. In 1908 five steamship companies were engaged in traffic between island ports and the mainland (including Mexico). Honolulu has cable connexion with San Francisco and the East, and the several islands of the group are served by wireless telegraph.
Commerce.—The position of the archipelago, at the “cross-roads” of the North Pacific, has made it commercially important since the days of the whale fishery, and it has a practical monopoly of coaling, watering and victualling. Its main disadvantage is the lack of harbours—Honolulu and Pearl Harbor are the only ones in the archipelago; but under the River and Harbour Act of 1905 examinations and surveys were made to improve Hilo Bay on the island of Hawaii. Pearl Harbor is the U.S. naval station, and a great naval dock, nearly 1200 ft. long, was projected for the station in 1908. Within recent years commerce has grown greatly in volume; it has always been almost entirely with the United States. In 1880 the value of imports from the United States was $2,086,000, that of exports to the United States was $4,606,000; in 1907 the value of shipments of domestic merchandise from the United States to Hawaii was $5,357,907, and the value of shipments of domestic merchandise from Hawaii to the United States was $31,984,433, of which $30,111,524 was the value of brown sugar, $133,133 the value of rice, $601,748 the value of canned fruits, $124,146 the value of green, ripe or dried fruits, $117,403 the value of hides and skins, and $105,515 the value of green or raw coffee. The shipments of foreign merchandise each way are relatively insignificant. In the fiscal year 1908 the exports from Hawaii to foreign countries were valued at $597,640, ten times as much as in 1905 ($59,541); the imports into Hawaii from foreign countries were valued at $4,682,399 in the fiscal year 1908, as against $3,014,964 in 1905.
Population.—The total population of the islands in 1890 was 89,990; in 1900 it was 154,001, an increase within the decade of 71.13%; in 1910 it was 191,909. In 1908 there were about 72,000 Japanese, 18,000 Chinese, 5000 Koreans, 23,000 Portuguese, 2000 Spanish, 2000 Porto Ricans, 35,000 Hawaiians and part Hawaiians and 12,000 Teutons. Of the total for 1900 there were 61,111 Japanese, 25,767 Chinese and 233 negroes; of the same total there were 90,780 foreign-born, of whom 56,234 were natives of Japan, and 6512 were natives of Portugal. There were in all in 1900, 106,369 males (69.1%; a preponderance due to the large number of Mongolian labourers, whose wives are left in Asia) and only 47,632 females. About three-fifths of the Hawaiians and nearly all of American, British or North European descent are Protestants. Most of the Portuguese and about one-third of the native Hawaiians are Roman Catholics. The Mormons claim more than 4000 adherents, whose principal settlement is at Laie, on the north-east shore of Oahu; the first Mormon missionaries came to the islands in 1850. The population of 1910 was distributed among the several islands as follows: Oahu, 82,028; Hawaii, 55,382; Kauai and Niihau, 23,952; Kalawao, 785; and Maui, Lanai, Kahoolawe and Molokai, 29,762. The population of Honolulu district, the entire urban population of the Territory, was 22,907 in 1890, 39,306 in 1900, and 52,183 in 1910.
The aboriginal Hawaiians (sometimes called Kanakas, from a Hawaiian word kanaka, meaning “man”) belong to the Malayo-Polynesian race; they probably settled in Hawaii in the 10th century, having formerly lived in Samoa, and possibly before that in Tahiti and the Native population. Marquesas. Their reddish-brown skin has been compared in hue to tarnished copper. Their hair is dark brown or black, straight, wavy or curly; the beard is thin, the face broad, the profile not prominent, the eyes large and expressive, the nose somewhat flattened, the lips thick, the teeth excellent in shape and of a pearly whiteness. The skull is sub-brachycephalic in type, with an index of 82.6 from living “specimens” and 79 from a large collection of skulls; it is never prognathous. Most of the people are of moderate stature, but the chiefs and the women of their families have been remarkable for their height, and 400 pounds was formerly not an unusual weight for one of this class. This corpulence was due not alone to over-feeding but to an almost purely vegetable diet; stoutness was a part of the ideal of feminine beauty. The superiority in physique of the nobles to the common people may have been due in part to a system of massage, the lomi-lomi; it is certainly contrary to the belief in the bad effects of inbreeding—among the upper classes marriage was almost entirely between near relatives.
The Rev. William Ellis, an early English missionary, described the natives as follows: “The inhabitants of these islands are, considered physically, amongst the finest races in the Pacific, bearing the strongest resemblance to the New Zealanders in stature, and in their well-developed muscular limbs. The tattooing of their bodies is less artistic than that of the New Zealanders, and much more limited than among some of the other islanders. They are also more hardy and industrious than those living nearer the equator. This in all probability arises from their salubrious climate, and the comparative sterility of their soil rendering them dependent upon the cultivation of the ground for the yam, the arum, and the sweet potato, their chief articles of food. Though, like all undisciplined races, the Sandwich Islanders [Hawaiians] have proved deficient in firm and steady perseverance, they manifest considerable intellectual capability. Their moral character, when first visited by Europeans, was not
