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hard labor "until he should consent to return to his master and consent to serve according to law;" and Sayewiz was sentenced to pay a fine of $5 and costs, and to be imprisoned at hard labor until said fine and costs be paid.
The supreme court decided that this sentence should be enforced; that the imprisonment of those people was not a penal, but a civil action. Under this sentence those men could be kept in jail for life, because they could be imprisoned until they would return to their service. This man, who was beaten and bruised, refused to go back and was therefore sentenced until he would go back.
Mr. ALLEN. I should like to ask the Senator with what offenses these men were charged?
Mr. PETTIGREW. I read a statement of the offenses.
Mr. ALLEN. I did not hear it. I thought the Senator was reading the syllabus of the opinion of the court. What was the specific crime with which the men were charged?
Mr. PETTIGREW. A violation of the contract to labor for three years upon one of those sugar plantations.
Mr. ALLEN. Declining to labor?
Mr. PETTIGREW. Simply declining to labor, and one of them showed that he had been punched and bruised and pounded by his taskmaster, and he preferred to go to jail rather than to return to such service. I should add that these were white men.
Mr. ALLEN. I should like to ask the Senator if he has a copy of the Hawaiian statutes which are in force on the subject of contract labor?
Mr. PETTIGREW. Yes; I have the Hawaiian statutes here.
Mr. ALLEN. I shall be glad to have the Senator insert those statutes in his remarks.
Mr. PETTIGREW. I will insert the sections which apply to this case. They are as follows:
sec. 1417. Any person who has attained the age of 20 years may bind himself or herself, by written contract, to serve another in any art, trade, profession, or employment for any term not exceeding five years.
sec. 1418. All engagements of service contracted in a foreign country to be executed in this shall be binding here: Provided, however, That all such engagements made for a longer period than ten years shall be reduced to that limit, to count from the day of the arrival of the person bound in this republic.
sec. 1419. If any person lawfully bound to service shall willfully absent himself from such service without the leave of his master, any district or police justice of the republic, upon complaint made under oath by the master, or by anyone on his behalf, may issue a warrant to apprehend such person and bring him before said justice; and if the complaint shall be maintained, the justice shall order such offender to be restored to his master, and he shall be compelled to serve the remainder of the time for which he originally contracted.
sec. 1420. If any such person shall refuse to serve according to the provisions of the last section, or the terms of his contract, his master may apply to any district or police justice where he may reside, who shall be authorized, by warrant or otherwise, to send for the person so refusing and, if such refusal be persisted in, to commit such person to prison, there to remain, at hard labor, until he will consent to servo according to law. And in case such person so bound as aforesaid shall have returned to the service of such master in obedience to such order of such justice, and shall again willfully absent himself from such service without the leave of his master, such district or police justice may fine such offender not exceeding $5 for the first offense, and for every subsequent offense thereafter not exceeding $10, and in default of payment thereof such offender shall be imprisoned at hard labor until such fine is paid: and at the expiration of such imprisonment such justice shall order such offender to be returned to his master to serve for the remainder of such original term of service.
Mr. CULLOM. Will the Senator allow me to interrupt him a moment?
Mr. PETTIGREW. I will.
Mr. CULLOM. I simply want to say that the purpose of this bill is to repeal all such laws as those, and then to make the bill so very thorough in that regard as to render it impossible that such conduct shall be carried on toward those people.
Mr. ALLEN. With the permission of the Senator from South Dakota, I will say I have looked at section 10 of this bill, which I apprehend is the section to which the Senator from Illinois refers, and I do not think the amendment offered is broad enough to cover the idea of the Senator from Illinois.
Mr. CULLOM. We have been trying to get it broad enough for two or three days.
Mr. CARTER. I suggest that it is impossible, unless the Senator from Nebraska will speak louder, to hear what he says.
Mr. ALLEN. I was saying that I do not think the amendment which I find in section 10 is broad enough to cover this question. It strikes me that it might all be covered in a very few words by referring to the sections of the Hawaiian statutes which the Senator from South Dakota [Mr. Pettigrew] has read, and enacting that those sections shall be repealed which provide that contracts for labor which are enforcible by penal statutes or by enforced servitude shall be annulled, and that hereafter there shall be no involuntary service.
Mr. PETTIGREW. I have offered such an amendment.
Mr. CULLOM. I was about to say that the amendment of the Senator from South Dakota, to which he was speaking in part, I supposed covered exactly what the Senator from Nebraska suggests; and, so far as I am concerned, I am in favor of adopting it.
Mr. ALLEN. It does partially.
Mr. CULLOM. I suppose the amendment the Senator refers to
goes far enough to absolutely prohibit any such thing in the future; and if it does not, I am for an amendment that will do it. Mr. ALLEN. If I may be indulged for a moment by the Senator from South Dakota, I wish to say that I have not had an opportunity for the last few days to be present in the Senate. I find that there is an objectionable feature in the very first section of the bill, a sentence that might be construed to include exactly what the Senator from South Dakota is now endeavoring to get rid of, and, with his indulgence, I want to read it. It is as follows:
sec. 1. That the phrase "the laws of Hawaii," as used in this act without qualifying words, shall mean the constitution and laws of the republic of Hawaii, including regulations having the effect of low and the decisions of the supreme court in force on the 12th day of August, 1898.
Mr. PETTIGREW. I wish to say to the Senator that those sections are, as I understand, specifically repealed by this bill. If the Senator will allow me to go on I will give my reasons for offering the amendment which I offer, since I am discussing this question.
Mr. ALLEN. Very well.
Mr. PETTIGREW. I think this bill specifically repeals those sections of the Hawaiian laws which I have been reading. Is not that correct, I ask the Senator from Illinois?
Mr. CULLOM. Yes; there is no doubt about it.
Mr. PETTIGREW. That is my opinion; but when I found that the supreme court of Hawaii had decided that these labor contracts were civil contracts and that this imprisonment was a civil process, I felt that it was necessary that something more specific and definite should be done than simply to repeal those sections. The committee agreed to an amendment which did do something more specific and definite, but it also said that remedy might be had in a civil action against a breach of one of these slave contracts. That I was not satisfied with, and therefore I brought in my amendment. I am not content that those men should bring in under our flag, knowing that it is in violation of our laws, 30,000 slave laborers, and then that there should be no remedy under heaven to prevent it, and that the Congress of the United States shall stand committed to the proposition that the planters may sue those people by civil process. Therefore I brought in the amendment. I have felt it my duty to expose these things, because the Committee on Foreign Relations chose to bring this bill here with section 10 in it, which was clearly intended to continue such contracts for slave labor until they expired.
Further than that, Mr. President, a year ago, when we tried to repeal the slave-labor clauses in the Hawaiian law, one of the commissioners we sent to Hawaii, and one of the framers of this bill, stood on this floor and objected to and prevented the repeal of those slave-labor clauses of that law. Since he did that 30,000 slave laborers have been taken into Hawaii under our flag. Therefore I determined to put the record of these infamous facts in the congressional record and let the people of the United States pass upon this question.
I now read a clipping from the Hawaiian Independent, which was sent me by Mr. Joseph O. Carter, whose character is above reproach; who is one of the few exceedingly able men of high character who descended from missionary stock in those islands. Most of them are a tough lot. I remember when the proposition first came here during Harrison's Administration for the annexation of Hawaii those missionary sugar planters signed a deliberate lie and Bent it to the Senate of the. United States to influence our action—Thurston and several of those people signed a deliberate falsehood; they knew it was false; they admitted afterwards that it was false, and wanted to know what difference it made. They undertook to rush through the treaty annexing those islands in the last days of Harrison's Administration by sending out a deliberate falsehood, signed by the sons of missionaries whose fathers went to Hawaii to convert the inhabitants to Christianity and whose sons have stolen all the lands of those people and their government beside.
Now, let us see what they have been doing since our flag went up. They have been importing slave labor; arid, what is more, the pillars of the Congregational Church in Hawaii, the sons of those missionaries, own stock in the Ewa plantation, and they have been boasting that they were importing Asiatics who were heathens so that they could come under the blessings of the influences of Christianity. Last year they imported a Buddhist priest and set up a Buddhist temple, because they said it made the laborers more quiet, attending church every Sunday, while the planters went on with this performance.
The article in the Hawaiian Independent to which I have referred is as follows:
We daily see a large number of Galicians in the chain gang working at the quarries and on the roads. They are white men; they are the class that our philanthropist of the official organ wants to make the sinew and bone of these islands as "small (d—— small) farmers," and yet they prefer to remain under the tender care of Mr. Dole's jailer to returning to slavery on a plantation.
There have been a number of comments In regard to the Galician laborers
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lodged in Oahu jail since the Independent took up the cudgels for the poorThe manager has a bad habit of going into the laborer*' quarters and pull-
men and criticized the outrageous laws which permit men to be treated asing them out
criminals for refusing to work under contracts which virtually place themLam Hing Wing, cook for a gang, said he never got full pay, though he
on par with slavery. We certainly blame the infamous laws which force theworked all the time. Two Hawaiians told me they had worked on the plan-
Galician’s to take the choice of going to jail or returning to the slave driverstation, but had left, as the manager was a very hard man to work for.
on the sugar estates, but we fail to see how Mr. Dole could interfere in theThe laborers' quarters are the filthiest I have ever been in; in fact, the
matter. If he to-morrow asked the council of state to pardon the men whowhole plantation is in need of a cleaning up. The inside of the rooms are
refuse to work under a contract, and if a pardon were granted, the "civil"black with cobwebs, and it looks as if whitewash was unknown on the place,
part of the contracts would be enforced and every man rearrested. to go toMr. Hanneberg said he intended to whitewash the houses at once. I sincerely
work in the cane fields. • Mr. Dole can no more break our laws than Mr.hope he has done so.
Judd can.The treatment of sick laborers on the plantation is such that it practically
amounts to cruelty. Near the beach, a good distance from the men's quar-
Here is another sample of the humane conduct of those mission-ters, is a room about 12 by 12 used as a hospital. The laborers call it the jail,
any sugar planters:I found in it at the time of my visit five Chinese and four Japanese laborers,
all sick. The room was in a filthy condition. These sick men have to leave
Dr. Alvarez. of this city, has also had the necessity for a public hospital •their quarters early in the morning when the whistle blows and go to the
brought very forcibly to him by reason of some Spanish plantation laborershospital, remaining there all day until the evening whistle blows, when they
being thrust upon him for medical attention. He is keeping them until theyare allowed to return to their quarters. Is this humane treatment? I hardly
are strong enough to work. One young Spaniard, who was brought to thethink so. I questioned Mr. Hanneberg on this matter, and he said that if the
Hawaiian Islands on the Victoria from Madeira and Spanish ports, has beenmen were allowed to stay in their quarters their friends visited them, and
with him for nearly two weeks. He is an educated man, having matriculatedthere were other reasons given by him.
at the University of Salamanca, taking the bachelor degree of that institu-This is not the first time that complaints have been made against Olowalu.
tion. Previous to coming to Honolulu he worked on a Maui plantation. HeThe place is isolated, and I think there is a good deal going on on the planta-
was weak in his legs, entirely unused to agricultural work, and before longtion that is not heard of. Some time ago I talked to Mr. W. O. Irwin and
was a fit subject for the plantation hospital. Instead of putting him there.Manager Hanneberg about the complaints made by the laborers. The man-
his contract was called for and later returned to him with cancellation ofager should be made to understand that be must keep his hands off the labor-
contract marked thereon "By mutual consent."ers: must be less severe in his system of docking; must keep the laborers'
quarters in better condition, and, above all, must put an end to the confine-
In other words, they turned him loose. They found he was notment in hospital. If he is not willing to do so, then no more contract labor-
capable physically, so they abandoned him.ors should be allowed to go to Olowalu.
1 have the honor to be, your obedient servant,
He had a little money and came to Honolulu as a deck passenger, and isWRAY TAYLOR.
now on Dr. Alvarez's hands, having been directed to him as a countryman ofSecretary Bureau of Immigration.
his. He was a very sick man upon arrival and is yet in a low state. TheCapt. Jas. A. King,
sewer contractors could not afford to give him work, as he was not strongPresident Board of Immigration.
enough. Through persistent medical treatment Dr. Alvarez has been able to
afford the man great relief, but he says he should have been in the hospitalIn the supreme court of the Hawaiian Islands. Special January term, 1899.
from the beginning.Honomu Sugar Company vs. A. Sayewiz. Honomu Sugar Company vs.
Here is another case:Nikoleg Gzeluch. Appeals from district magistrate of South Hilo, island
An old man, a Spaniard, nearly 60 years of age, is also under medical treat-of Hawaii. Submitted January 19,1899. Decided June 18,1899. Judd, C. J.,
ment and being cared for at the Doctor's house. He, too, was a plantationWhiting, J., and Circuit Judge Perry, in place of Frear, J., absent.
laborer in Kau. Hawaii, and was a good worker. One day he was in a smallActions under the masters and servants act are civil actions, and should
pit in a cane field when three Japs, in a mischievous mood, hurled a largebe so entitled. (Coolidge vi. Puaaiki, 3 Haw., 811.)
stone upon him, breaking his shoulder and rendering him unconscious. HeCertain provisions of the Constitution of the United States are not in force
was found some three hours afterwards. He, however, was given no medicalin Hawaii during the present transition period, to wit: Amendments V, VI,
attention and was taken into a Portuguese family, which cared for him forVII, VIII, and XIII, and Article III, section 2. (See Peacock & Co. vs. Repub-
four weeks.lic of Hawaii, ante, page 27. and Republic of Hawaii vs. Edwards, ante, page -.)