No alarm clock that was ever invented smote the ears with greater
animosity than did the ship's gong at 6:30 the morning we arrived at
Honolulu. If it had not been for the fact that the committee was there
(just outside our portholes, in yachts loaded with leis to welcome us)
it would have taken even more than that disturber of the peace to arouse
us, for sleep seemed the most desired thing after the Chinese dinner
dance that had lasted until the wee hours.
We were all at the luncheon given to us by the Honolulu Commercial Club.
Faxton Bishop told us of the seriousness of the labor situation and
asked our aid. We all remember how eloquently our much lamented
spokesman, A. F. Morrison, answered the address and said that
California's prosperity depended in many ways upon Hawaiian prosperity
and their problems were our problems.
Wallace R. Farrington, Governor of the Territory of Hawaii, said that
the labor situation must be solved to insure the prosperity of the
islands.
We were next whizzed to the Outrigger Club, and if everyone had seen how
hard Warren Shannon paddled to reach the crest of a wave before it
broke, they would all be convinced that he was the hardest working
supervisor we have.
John H. Wilson, the mayor of Honolulu, motored our party around the
island and gave us a luncheon at a hotel near one of the beaches. We
will remember this day as one of our happiest.
Chapter III
The first day out of Honolulu we were all discussing our impressions.
Most of us had passed the Honolulu schools at recess time and had noted
only one or two white-skinned children. It was, as Dr. A. W. Morton
expressed it, "Looks like a little Japan." Of course, everyone knows of
the vividness and great variety of the coloring of the foliage in sharp
contrast to the brilliant pink soil, but we could not stop talking about
it. Some of us noted the beauty of a little plant, which at home we
carefully water and cherish in some tiny pot, only to learn that on the
Island it grows in such abundance that it is considered nearly as great
a pest as the Mediterranean fly - so it would seem that beauty in the
vegetable kingdom does not always mean desirability, any more than it
does in the human family.
Many of us had been taken over the sugar-cane plantations, seen the
young plants pushing through the paper (put over them to keep out the
weeds), gone through the refineries, seeing the cane stalks ground in
the huge rollers and had been allowed to taste the sickeningly sweet
molasses. Along the roads were Hawaiian huts with octopi drying on the
porches, beside the reclining figures of the strong providers of the
family, resting up, no doubt, from the task of catching and killing the
octopi by hitting the squid's heads.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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