Hawaii - James Michener [468]
He outlined a sensible plan whereby his impressive cousin, big Hewie Janders, got himself elected president of the senate, while half a dozen assorted lawyers, treasurers and accountants who worked for the big firms ran for lesser seats. For speaker of the house Hoxworth shrewdly selected the jovial, relaxed Chinese politician Kangaroo Kee, to whom he offered several lucrative contracts; and so carefully did the new young leader plan that before long Hawaii passed into that secure and reasonable period when most of its legislation was decided upon first at quiet meetings held in the board room of H & H, whence it was sent to trusted representatives who could be depended upon to enact laws pretty much as proposed by Hoxworth Hale and his close associates.
The board room of H & H was on the second floor of a large, fortlike building that stood at the comer of Fort and Merchant, and from this combination of facts the powerful clique that ran Hawaii came to be known simply as The Fort. It included, of course, H & H and also J & W. The Hewletts were members, as were some of the lesser planters from the big island. Banks, railways, trust companies and large estate owners were represented, but exactly what The Fort consisted of no man could properly say; it was simply the group who by common consent were entitled to meet on the second floor of H & H, a close-knit, cohesive body of men who were determined to give Hawaii a responsible form of government.
The Fort rarely abused its power. If some crackpot legislator not subservient to it wanted to curry favor with his constituents shouting, "I promised you I'd get a playground for Kakaako, and I'll get you a playground for Kakaako," they let him yell, and at one of their meetings Hoxworth Hale would ask, "Is there any reason why there shouldn't be a playground at Kakaako?" and if such a project did not imperil any fundamental interest of The Fort--and if its cost could be passed on to the general public without raising real estate taxes--the playground was allowed to go through. But if the same legislator subsequently shouted, "Last year plantation trains running without lights killed four people, so I insist upon lights where plantation trains cross public roads," then The Fort moved quietly but massively into action. "We've looked into costs of such lights," Hoxworth Hale would tell his directors, "and they would cut our sugar profits to the bone." Somehow such bills were iceboxed in committee, and no amount of yelling by infuriated legislators could get them unfrozen.
Any major bill affecting either sugar, pineapple or land had to be actually drafted by The Fort itself; such bills were too important to be left to the whims of a legislature. But it was to Hoxworth Kale's credit that he did not allow grossly abusive bills to be proposed: "My interpretation of democracy is that business must never intrude into ordinary legislative processes, except where matters of vital importance are at stake and then never for selfish motives." At some sessions of the legislature forty-nine out of fifty bills were not interfered with in any way; but this was partly because the legislators had learned to ask, before proposing a bill, "Will The Fort go for this?" It was common prudence not to propose something that The Fort would automatically have to fight.
A fine example of Hoxworth Hale's statesmanship came one January when his wife, a Janders girl with a warm concern for human rights, said at breakfast, "Hoxworth, have you seen the casualty lists that resulted from the New Year's fireworks?"
"Were they bad, Malama?" he asked. One of the annual highlights in Hawaii was the Chinese New Year, when the Chinese practically blew the city apart with detonations of the most spectacular sort.
"This year one boy was killed and fourteen were seriously maimed," Malama reported. Really, these fireworks must be outlawed."
Hoxworth, who agreed that the practice of