Hawaii - James Michener [460]
"Look at the silent tombstones in every locality. They are the last emblems of Hawaii's pioneers in labor. Why should they die in poverty while others get rich from their labors? Why should hardworking men continue to get seventy-seven cents a day? The other day a plantation manager said, 'I think of field hands as I do jute bags. Buy them, use them, buy others.' We think of ourselves as human beings and as members of the great human family. We want $1.25 a day for an eight-hour day. And in the interests of common humanity we deserve it."
This extraordinary preamble to the workers' demands was received differently in four different quarters. When Kamejiro Sakagawa and his co-workers heard the flowery words read to them in Japanese, with lunas at hand to take down the names of everyone attending the meeting, Kamejiro listened with amazement that his friend Mr. Ishii should have caught so exactly the emotions that motivated the workers. With tears in his eyes he said, "Inoguchi-san? Have you ever heard a better piece of paper? He says that we are part of the great human family. Did you ever think of yourself that way before?"
"All I think," Inoguchi-san replied, "is that there's going to be trouble."
To his wife Yoriko, Kamejiro said, "When I heard Ishii-san's statement, I was glad for every dollar I ever loaned him. It looks as if we will get all we have asked for, because that is a very powerful bit of reasoning."
His stolid wife was more of Inoguchi's turn of mind. "We had better get ready to go hungry," she warned. And that day the strike began.
When the manifesto reached Wild Whip Hoxworth, the head of the planters' association gagged before he got to the end of it. "Mad Russian Bolshevism!" he bellowed. "Get the planters together!” When the leaders of the sugar industry were assembled, he went over the statement line by line. " 'We, the laborers,' " he read scornfully. "As if they had convened themselves into some kind of revolutionary tribunal. 'On this money we starve.' What a degrading horrible play to the emotions. 'Good men and ladies of Hawaii!' As if by appealing to them they could by-pass those of us responsible for wages. By God, gentlemen, this document strikes at the very roots of society. It's rampant, red, pillaging Russianism, and if there is any man in this room who breaks ranks to give those little yellow bastards an inch, I'll personally knock him down and kick his weak-livered guts in. Is that understood?"
The other planters, who were perhaps more appalled by the Bolshevik-inspired manifesto than Wild Whip, for they had studied it in a calmer light and understood its implications better than he, showed no signs of disagreeing with their leader, and when he was satisfied on that point he passed to additional matters. "Now who in hell among you made that stupid statement about workmen and jute bags?" There was silence, and after a moment he slammed the paper on the table and growled, "It's true, and everyone here knows it's true. But don't say such things. Shut up. It's nobody's business what you and I do or think. Shut up. There's a dreadful spirit abroad in the world today, and I blame it all on Woodrow Wilson. Appealing to the people over the heads of their government. Just like this dirty sheet. From now on, I'll do the talking."
He summoned a secretary and dictated, while his astonished compatriots listened: "We have studied the statement of the Federation of Japanese Labor in Hawaii and are pleased to note its temperate tenor, its