THEIR IDEA OF BEING AMERICANS.
HAWAII is now a Territory of the Union, with a territorial form of government, and so passes away the last vestige of the Government of the Republic of Hawaii. The territorial government was formally inaugurated June 14, when Governor Dole took the oath of office and delivered his inaugural address. Concerning the new situation a press correspondent says that the going into effect of the territorial act was signalized on a large number of the plantations by strikes and labor troubles. The most serious difficulties have been experienced on the island of Maui. The Japanese laborers have been the most active in the troubles, tho the strikers have not been confined to that nationality. The primal cause of the trouble seems to have been an idea widespread, especially among the Japanese, that the territorial act, besides abrogating their contracts, made them American citizens, and that no American citizen could be required to work for less than $1.00 a day. Where this $1.00 a day idea did not prevail, the principal purpose of the strikers seems to have been to compel a surrender of their labor contracts, the idea prevailing that until the written contracts were actually delivered up they might still possibly be of some force and effect, at least a trap or stumbling-block for the unwary. On June 15 there was practically a universal strike of Japanese laborers, joined in by many Hawaiians and Portuguese, on the island of Kauai. There was no violence, simply a cessation of work. At Kealia it is reported that 643 Japanese were given their contracts, whereupon they immediately went to work, making no demand for an increase in wages. On other plantations of Kauai the same thing was done, ending the strike so far as the Japanese were concerned. On Maui the planters, several days before Admission day, decided to increase the maximum wages paid field hands to $17 a month, paying that to all who had shown a certain degree of capacity and had been peaceable. So strong seems to have been the $1.00 a day idea, however, that this apparently merely confirmed it in the minds of many of the laborers, and, as a consequence, practically all the laborers on Wailuku and all the Japanese on Haiku plantations quit work and the plantations had to shut down.