Sugar | Page 9 | Images of Old Hawaiʻi

November 17, 2021 by Peter T Young 3 Comments

Closing Years of Spreckelsville in Spreckels’ Hands

Claus Spreckels (1828–1908) was perhaps the most successful German-American immigrant entrepreneur of the late-nineteenth century; he was one of the ten richest Americans of his time.

The career of the “sugar king” of California, Hawaiʻi and the American West consisted of building and breaking monopolies in sugar, transport, gas, electricity, real estate, newspapers, banks and breweries.

The first industry in which Spreckels succeeded was quite typical for German immigrants: beer brewing. In the spring of 1857, together with his brother Peter Spreckels and Claus Mangels, among others, he founded the Albany Brewery, the first large-scale producer of beer in San Francisco.

Though profitable, he sold his beer operation in 1863 and switched to a new field that would make him rich: sugar. That year, he started the Bay Sugar Refining Company, but sold it three years later.

He then constructed the California Sugar Refinery in 1867 to process sugar. While grocers, then, sold “sugar loaves,” Spreckels introduced the European process of packaging granulated sugar and sugar cubes (so customers could more easily divide the portions.)

Spreckels came to Hawaii in 1876 on the same ship that brought favorable news of the Reciprocity Treaty with the United States. In effect, the treaty gave Hawaiian sugar planters a price increase of two cents a pound and thus set off an economic boom in the island kingdom.

Spreckels had originally opposed the treaty; but after it passed, he quickly made up his mind to take advantage of it. He decided that the arid central plains would be suitable for a sugar plantation if he could get water. Two years later he returned to Hawaii accompanied by a well-known California irrigation engineer, Hermann Schussler. (Adler)

In 1878, through his friendship with King Kalākaua, Claus Spreckels secured a lease of 40,000-acres of land on Maui and by 1882 he acquired the fee simple title to the Wailuku ahupuaʻa.

That same year, Spreckels founded the Hawaiian Commercial Company, which quickly became the largest and best-equipped sugar plantation in the islands.

As a vehicle for carrying out his plans, Spreckels incorporated the Hawaiian Commercial Company in San Francisco on September 30, 1878. The authorized capital stock was $10,000,000, represented by 1,000 shares having a par value of $10,000 each. Claus Spreckels was the majority stockholder. At par, his holdings amounted to $5,200,000.

His interest and investment prompted the Hawaiian Gazette to say, “With an aggregation of brains, business enterprise and capital, this new company will infuse new life and health into the great sugar industries of Hawaii. …”

“It is more than probable that the Island production can be increased six-fold.” (Hawaiian Gazette. October 30, 1878) (The six-fold increase in production was realized in 11 years. (Adler))

In 1880 Spreckels engaged Joseph and Andrew Moore of the Risdon Iron Works, San Francisco, to build a mill with a capacity of about twenty tons a day. Construction of three more mills got underway the next year, with improved design based on experience with the first mill.

These mills were completed by 1882, and capacity was thus increased to about 100 tons a day. The crop for that year was estimated at 12,000 tons, a four-fold rise over the yield for 1880. (Adler)

The Hawaiian Commercial and Sugar Company was incorporated (1882) in San Francisco and went public; it took over the assets of the Hawaiian Commercial Company. Capital stock of the new company consisted of 100,000 shares of $100 par value. Purposes of the company as stated in the charter were much the same as those of Hawaiian Commercial.

After the incorporation of the Hawaiian Commercial Company, Spreckels moved swiftly to make his plantation the most modern and the most productive in the kingdom. (Adler)

Spreckels was the first island planter to achieve nearly complete control of sugar from growing to marketing. In this he set the pattern which the Hawaiian sugar industry.

The plantation, with its vast fields of cane irrigated by the Spreckels ditch, was the first link in the chain of vertical integration. The second link was the Honolulu firm of William G. Irwin and Company (Spreckels and Irwin), which acted as agent for the Spreckelsville plantation and also for others.

In the 1880’s and 1890’s it was one of the leading sugar agencies of the kingdom. The Irwin company also acted as agent for the Spreckels Oceanic Steamship Line, which during the last two decades of the nineteenth century dominated the transport of Hawaiian sugar.

Oceanic thus formed the third link in the chain of control. The last link was the Spreckels refinery in San Francisco, where most island sugar was refined.

Besides setting the pattern for vertical integration, Spreckels made many pioneering contributions to Hawaiian sugar technology.

Spreckels was the first to use a five-roller mill, instead of the usual three-roller of the time. (This increased the percentage of juice extraction from the cane, that also resulted in better drying of the bagasse (which could then be used for fuel)). (Adler)

Spreckels was the first to use electric lights in the mill. (Electric lights permitted the mills to operate night and day, and thereby avoided the expense of shut-down during the height of the grinding season. His use of electric lights in 1881 preceded the lighting in Iolani Palace by five years.) (Adler)

Spreckels was the first to use rail in hauling cane. (An ingenious system of permanent and portable track connected up with the existing railroad running to the port of Kahului.)

(At Spreckelsville, rails radiated in all directions from the mill buildings and also connected them with each other. Thus Spreckels found a solution for intra-plantation cane hauling, inter-mill and intra-mill transport, and for getting sugar directly to the wharf at Kahului.) (Adler)

Spreckels was the first to use a steam plow. (Among the advantages of the plow were that a greater area could be plowed per day than with oxen or mule teams; more effective plowing increased the sugar yield per acre; and there was a saving of man power.) (Adler)

Spreckels knew water was key to growing sugar and he built the largest irrigation ditch that had ever been undertaken in the islands. On his last trip to Spreckelsville, in August, 1893, Spreckels was making plans for an electric power plant to operate pumping stations. This would enable him to increase the water supply and hence the acreage in cane. (Adler)

The Advertiser observed, “The company means business. … A vast improvement will be noticeable in the commerce of this kingdom, and ere long, these islands so little known beyond the Coast states will be distributing their staple products all over the American continent.” (PCA, April 2, 1882)

The Gazette agreed, “Claus Spreckels has certainly made out of what was once considered worthless land a waving plain of cane. One must ride through these acres and acres of cane to fairly understand how great the enterprise is …”

“If this is gathering wealth to the owners and projectors, it is also scattering money among the Hawaiian people. We learned that during the construction of the mills the payroll of the plantation rose … A large portion of this must find its way into the pockets of the Maui people, native and foreign, another portion must come to Honolulu.” (Hawaiian Gazette, August 23, 1882)

In 1892 the plantation was called “the largest sugar estate in the world.” It contained 40,000 acres, of which 25,000 were good cane land. Twelve thousand acres were under cultivation. The fields extended for fifteen miles and were several miles wide.

The mills had a capacity of 30,000 tons a year, and were “fitted with the most perfect machinery and appliances which the ingenuity of man has yet devised.” (Adler)

But all was not rosy for Spreckels and his sugar plantations.

Upon public issue in 1882, the stock sold around $60. By the fall of 1884 the company was deep in debt, and the price was down to 25 cents. A personal loan by Spreckels of $1,000,000 and authorization by the directors of a bond issue moved the price up again. Good crop reports in 1885 reinforced this upward movement.

Then, in 1890, the U.S. Congress enacted the McKinley Tariff, which allowed raw sugar to enter the United States free of duty and established a two-cent per pound bounty for domestic producers.

The overall effect of the McKinley Tariff was to completely erase the advantages that the reciprocity treaty had provided to Hawaiian sugar producers over other foreign sugar producers selling in the U.S. market. The value of Hawaiian merchandise exports plunged from $13 million in 1890 to $10 million in 1891 to a low point of $8 million in 1892. (La Croix)

In the 1892 report of the board of directors, the stockholders were told in effect that the stock was valueless and the corporation deeply in debt.

The depressing effect of the McKinley bill on the price of sugar and the lack of water (no rain having fallen on the Hawaiian islands in a long period) were the main reasons given as an explanation for the disastrous turn which affairs had taken. (Adler)

“Fifteen gentlemen representing over eight thousand shares of stock in the Hawaiian Commercial and Sugar Company met yesterday (17th inst.) in the law offices of Blake, Howison & Williams and expressed themselves very freely concerning the board of directors, who had permitted the affairs of the great corporation to become badly entangled”.

“It appears that at a meeting held when the report was ready for presentation several of the stockholders declined to accept the situation and suggested that an assessment might be levied and tile money thus raised be used to carry the corporation through the financial breakers.”

“This was agreed to and it was anticipated that the assessment would be about $1 a share. The good people who had invested their wealth in the Hawaiian Commercial Company were horrified by an invitation to come forward and yield up $5 a share.”

“This, the directors argued, would bring $500,000 into the treasury and would be needed, every cent of it. The date on which the assessment became delinquent was fixed at January 27th.”

“The levy was considered exorbitant, and a few days ago a number of stockholders, representing 10,000 shares out of a total of 100,000, met and appointed a committee to wait on Claus Spreckels, who is popularly supposed to have possession of 60,000 shares, or a controlling interest in the corporation, and ask him to withdraw the assessment altogether or reduce it to $1.”

“As Attorney Williams explained to the meeting yesterday: ‘Mr. Spreckels declined to listen to a paper which I had drawn up with care, and after investigation of the situation, politely requested them to vacate his office. They left.’” (Hawaiian Gazette, January 31, 1893)

Then, “a bitter family feud erupted, pitting Spreckels and his sons Adolph and John against his sons Rudolph and Claus A. ‘Gus’ Spreckels.” (Hamilton)

“There is litigation in the family of Claus Spreckels, the sugar king.”

“C. A. Spreckels, the youngest son, has begun it by filing a complaint against his father, Claus Spreckels, charging that the latter has conspired with John D. and A. B. Spreckels and other directors of the Hawaiian Commercial and Sugar Company to crowd the plaintiff and other stockholders out of the corporation.”

“Allegations of fraud to secure the desired end are made, with various revelations in connection with the business of the sugar company.”

“Claus Spreckels and the two elder sons are asked to pay $2,500,000 to the corporation as damages for their fraudulent conspiracy, and a demand is made upon the Court for an injunction to prevent the carrying out of the plans.” (Hawaiian Gazette, December 12, 1893)

An out-of-court settlement of the suit in January, 1894, gave Gus Spreckels control of Hawaiian Commercial and Sugar Company. His brother Rudolph became a director. Claus Spreckels and his other sons, John and Adolph, were ousted.

Hackfeld and Company replaced Irwin and Company as Hawaiian agent for the Spreckelsville plantation. Control of the Hawaiian Commercial and Sugar Company and of the Spreckelsville plantation thus slipped from the hands of the elder Spreckels. (Adler)

The upstart triumph was short lived, however, for in 1898 a competing firm bought out the company and ousted the brothers from its management. (Hamilton)

The buyers of HC&S included James B. Castle, S. N. Castle estate, William R. Castle, Henry P. Baldwin, and Samuel T Alexander. The firm of Alexander and Baldwin became Honolulu agent for the plantation in place of Hackfeld and Company.

“Stock once 25 cents, is up from $28 to $34 and over and will go to $50.” (PCA, October 13, 1898) “The stock of the company now passes largely into the hands of residents of Honolulu.” (PCA, October 15, 1989)

At the time of these last events Claus Spreckels was 70 years old. In his declining years, then, he saw the magnificent plantation which he had founded slip not only from his grasp but from that of his family. (Adler)

November 5, 2021 by Peter T Young 1 Comment

The “Sweet” Road

At the turn of the century (going into the 1900s) road repairs were in the news. A lot. A good indication was “Kamaaina’s” July 20, 1912 letter to the Star-Bulletin editor,

“Just once in the last sixteen years have repairs been made on Kalakaua avenue. All other roads and public thoroughfares in Honolulu; have received attention, but apparently this one has been forgotten.”

“Certainly the neglect Is not due to the fact that Kalakaua avenue does not need it nor to the failure of residents and property owners to protest; the dust is so heavy that on windy days the homes nearby are almost untenable, and in wet weather portions of this road are almost impassable.’ (Star-Bulletin, July 20, 1912)

Before we go on, we should address some of the terms used in the day:

Asphalt – a mixture of dark bituminous pitch with sand or gravel bonded with a sticky, black, highly viscous liquid or semi-solid form of petroleum or coal tar and coal-tar pitch

Bitulithic – essentially, the maximum aggregate size was 75 mm ranging down to dust. The concept was to produce a mix which could use a more “fluid” binder than used for sheet asphalt.

Bitumen – a black viscous mixture of hydrocarbons obtained naturally or as a residue from petroleum distillation

Concrete – created using a concrete mix of cement, coarse aggregate, sand, and water.

Macadam – angular aggregate over a well-compacted subgrade; maximum aggregate sizes was that “no stone larger than will enter a man’s mouth should go into a road” – coal tar added as binder

Warrenite – a thin, approximately 25 mm thick layer of sheet asphalt placed on top of the hot, uncompacted Bitulithic

Road work was delayed … different people preferred different solutions, and once decisions were made, they were challenged.

The February 7, 1911 Hawaiian Star editorial expressed the community’s frustration, “Road Making – The art of road-making here does not seem to have profited much by experience.”

“For years this administration or that has tried its hand, but if permanent records of methods and results were kept they do not appear to have made an impression.”

“Each road superintendent, as he comes along, tries a new scheme which may, as was the case with the last paving of King street, simply repeat past errors.”

“Yet there ought, by this time, to be a definite formula for street building, not to be lightly departed from, which would assure the most suitable rock, the most satisfactory binding material and a uniform cost per yard for construction of plain work, sources of supply and aspects of topography being equal, at all times.”

“During the regime of H. E. Cooper in the Public Works office two ways of road-making were tried on Kalakaua avenue, the plan was to judge between the two. The highway has had a long test; and in its worst spots the road is better than some that have been built since by other plans.”

“The question that occurs is, have the original plans been saved; is all the necessary data in hand; and if Kalakaua avenue were rebuilt would the lessons already learned from the Cooper experiment be applied? The Star does not say they wouldn’t be. But if they were not, the fact would not cause, surprise. . .”

“‘Observer,’ an intelligent writer on this subject in the morning paper says: ‘Our lava rock is poor material for road-making. It soon turns into mud or blows away as dust. Coral makes an admirable road for wet or dry weather.’”

“If this is a fact, why wasn’t lava rock thrown out for coral long ago? Yet it is being used right along as if experience taught nothing. Is this good business policy?” (Hawaiian Star, February 7, 1911)

The October 30, 1904 Pacific Commercial Advertiser editorial called for experimentation, “Local Street Paving. The smoothness of a macadamized road in Honolulu wears off in about a year and if there is much travel or rain the road needs to be repaired or rebuilt in three years. Obviously this is a bad showing.”

“Macadam of the right sort should hold its form for seven or eight years unless disturbed meanwhile by the laying of pipes; but the trouble in Honolulu is that our road-building material, friable volcanic rock, is not adapted to wear and tear. If we had granite to break up, our highways would not create such an endless bill of costs.”

“A trial is about to be made of asphalt on one of the business streets, a substance which may keep its smoothness of surface better than macadam, but which is a radiator of heat. On a warm day the asphaltum surface of the Naval docks is almost unbearable.”

“In Washington the streets, which are paved with this material, affect the thermometers all along the way. Still if asphaltum highways prove durable and therefore less expensive than macadam …”

“… the public here may not complain of the higher temperature. It is an offset also for solar discomfort to have the springy, rubber-like feeling of asphalt under one’s carriage wheels.”

“A good plan, in experimenting with our streets, would be to try several pavements in a distance, on one highway, of a few blocks. Then any casual tax payer could tell how the same volume of travel affects different building materials.”

“If it ever comes to that, the Advertiser hopes the pavements of Sydney, N. S. W., will have, consideration. Some years ago the United States Consul General there reported that noiseless pavement; laid a decade before on the Sydney street of heaviest traffic had shown no signs of deterioration.”

“This pavement had pounded and rolled rock at the bottom, with one foot lengths of eucalyptus trunks on end between curb and curb, the spaces or crevices between each trunk length being filled with gravel and concrete and the top presenting a smooth surface of asphalt which protected the wood from rain. It was found that the eucalyptus grew harder with the years.”

“As eucalyptus is readily procurable here some experiments with it might not come amiss.” (Commercial Pacific Advertiser, October 30. 1904)

In addition to eucalyptus, there were thought of Ohia block paving, “That bitullthic paving for King street will be decided upon by, the Board of Supervisors tonight looked like a foregone conclusion this morning.”

“The road committee, It Is under stood, will report unanimously In favor of J. A Gilman’s bid for paving King street with bitulithic, and although some of the Supervisors are rather inclined in favor ohia wood block paving, they will probably not carry out the opposition tonight in the face of a majority for bitulithic.”

“Supervisors Murray and McCleilan are said to favor giving ohia block paving a fair try-out in Honolulu. The others believe that as the bitulithic paving bid was by far the lowest, it should be adopted.” (Evening Bulletin, December 5, 1911)

Edward Scott in ‘Saga’, recalls one of the alternatives that didn’t work – he called it “Honolulu’s Sweetest Memory – ‘Molasses Streets,’”

“Shortly after the turn of the century, W ‘Willie’ Wall, city engineer of Honolulu, hit upon the idea of paving King Street and Kalakaua Avenue with a mixture of bagasse, (cane refuse from sugar making), crushed lava, and beach sand.”

“Willie went to work immediately and laid down a large section of thoroughfare, attracting head-scratching engineers and flies to what would become Honolulu’s ‘sweetest memory.’”

“This concoction rolled out smoothly and all went well until the first heavy rain, which melted Wall’s ‘rock candy’ roadway turning it into a sticky quagmire.”

“Here was a sidewalk superintendent’s Utopia as owners of vehicles found that the gluey mess stuck like hardening cement. Dozens of suggestions were made. Undaunted, Wall called for more crushed lava.”

“When the rainy season set in again, Kalakaua Avenue once more turned into a syrupy tide, the aromatic flow oozing down the gutters until it merged in a swirling mess covering the duck and taro ponds off McCully Street.”

“Until his dying day ‘Willie’ Wall maintained that, given time, he could have made his molasses streets work. True or not the experiment, in retrospect, remains the city’s sweetest and stickiest memory.” (Scott, Saga, 413)

May 9, 2020 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

… and a Bottle of Rum

Rum is a beverage that seems to have had its origins on the 17th century Caribbean sugarcane plantations and by the 18th century its popularity had spread throughout world.

Rum is a distilled alcoholic beverage made from sugarcane byproducts such as molasses, or directly from sugarcane juice, by a process of fermentation and distillation; it is then usually aged in oak barrels.

The origin of the word “rum” is generally unclear. In an 1824 essay about the word’s origin, Samuel Morewood suggested the word ‘rum’ might be from the British slang term for “the best”, as in “having a rum time.”

“As spirits, extracted from molasses, could not well be ranked under the name whiskey, brandy, or arrack, it would be called rum, to denote its excellence or superior quality.” (Samuel Morewood, 1824)

Captain James Cook and the crews of the HMS Resolution and HMS Discovery first made landfall on Kauaʻi in 1778. It is believed that in the holds of both ships were barrels of rum.

According to Kamakau, “The first taste that Kamehameha and his people had of rum was at Kailua in 1791 or perhaps a little earlier, brought in by Captain Maxwell. Kamehameha went out to the ship with (John) Young and (Isaac) Davis when it was sighted off Keāhole Point and there they all drank rum. …. Then nothing would do but Ka-lani-moku must get some of this sparkling water, and he was the first chief to buy rum.”

Shortly thereafter, while in Waikīkī, after having tasted the “dancing water,” Kamehameha I gained the apparent honor of having spread the making of rum from Oʻahu to Hawaiʻi island. (Kanahele)

After he saw a foreigner make rum in Honolulu, he set up his own still. Spurred by his own appetite for rum, he soon made rum drinking common among chiefs and chiefesses as well as commoners. (Kanahele)

Many of the subsequent royalty and chiefs also drank alcoholic beverages (several overindulged.)

Within a decade or so, Island residents were producing liquor on a commercial basis. “It was while Kamehameha was on Oahu that rum was first distilled in the Hawaiian group,” wrote Kamakau.

“In 1809 rum was being distilled by the well-known foreigner, Oliver Holmes, at Kewalo, and later he and David Laho-loa distilled rum at Makaho.” Several small distilleries were in operation by the 1820s.

Although both Hawaiians and foreign residents had been drinking hard liquor – either bought from visiting ships or distilled locally – for many years, no mention of bars or saloons occurs in the historical record.

The early missionaries were not teetotalers – their departure from Boston Harbor was delayed because “on the passengers examining their stores, they found a short supply of that article at day light Capt. Blanchard went up to Boston at 11 am (October 24, 1819). Captain Blanchard returned from town with a supply of bread & spirits for the missionaries.” (James Hunnewell Log)

“(I)t was ascertained that our soft bread and crackers and all the ardent spirits were left behind. Consequently, a boat was sent off for Boston that night, which did not return until the next day towards night.” (Lucia Ruggles Holman Journal)

Once they arrived, Sybil Bingham noted in her diary, “(Anthony Allen) set upon the table decanters and glasses with wine and brandy to refresh us”. They ended dinner “with wine and melons”. (June 24, 1820, Sybil Bingham)

By November 1822, Honolulu had seventeen grog shops operated by foreigners. Drinking places were one of the earliest types of retail business established in the Islands.

Whalers – primarily American vessels – began arriving in Hawai’i in the early 19th century; they were hunting whales primarily for the whale oil for heating, lamps and in industrial machinery; they usually stopped as they crossed the Pacific twice a year to restock provisions, replenish their crews and transship their whale oil cargoes.

For Hawaiian ports, especially Honolulu and Lāhaina, the whaling fleet was the crux of the economy for 20-years or more. More than 100-ships stopped in Hawaiian ports in 1824. Over the next two decades, the Pacific whaling fleet nearly quadrupled in size and in the record year of 1846, 736-whaling ships arrived in Hawai’i.

With these ships and sailors came more rum; it became one of the sought-after items the Hawaiians traded for with the Westerners.

“For some years after the arrival of missionaries at the islands it was not uncommon in going to the enclosure of the king, or some other place of resort, to find after a previous night’s revelry, exhausted cases of ardent spirits standing exposed and the emptied bottles strewn about in confusion amidst the disgusting bodies of men, women and children lying promiscuously in the deep sleep of drunkenness.” (Dibble)

Fort Kekuanohu along Honolulu Harbor served as a jail for breaches of etiquette by sailors on liberty – disorderly sailors could find themselves lodged in the Fort pending redemption at $30 a head.

In 1874, a legislative act was passed that allowed distillation of rum on sugar plantations. According to a report in ‘The Friend,’ “the only planter in the Legislature voted three times against the passage of the Act.”

The first export of Hawaiian rum was made on May 15, 1875 – the product of Heʻeia Plantation.

The post WW II years saw new rum concoctions. Reportedly, Harry Yee invented the Blue Hawaii cocktail and dropped in a tiny Japanese parasol and Vic Bergeron created the Mai Tai and opened Trader Vic’s, America’s first theme restaurant that featured the art, decor and food of Polynesia.

Follow Peter T Young on Facebook

Follow Peter T Young on Google+

Follow Peter T Young on LinkedIn

Follow Peter T Young on Blogger

Rum Ration

RUM RATION ABOARD HMS KING GEORGE V, 1940 (A 1777) Below deck, a line of seamen queue to collect the daily rum ration for their mess. Each man is holding a jug or bucket. The rum is being issued from a large barrel with ‘THE KING – GOD BLESS HIM’ on it. Royal Marines issue the rum with measuring jugs while a Royal Navy Petty Officer and Sub-Lieutenant observe. Copyright: © IWM. Original Source: http://www.iwm.org.uk/collections/item/object/205185139

Rum Ration

Victor_Bergeron-Trader_Vic’s_Invents_Mai_Tai-1944

Trader_Vic’s_Opens_First_Franchise_in_Hawaii-1950

Trader_Vic’s_Matchbook_cover

Trader_Vic’s_International_Marketplace

Trader_Vic’s_Denver

Trader Vic’s International Market Place

April 23, 2020 by Peter T Young Leave a Comment

Meyer Sugar

At the age of twenty-four, Rudolph Wilhelm Meyer emigrated from Germany to Hawaiʻi where he arrived on January 20, 1850. At the time, Meyer listed his occupation as a surveyor.

His main purpose in leaving Germany was to join the “Gold Rush” to California in 1848, but he was delayed on a stopover in Sidney, Australia, and again in Tahiti, after which he landed at Lāhaina, Maui.

Meyer spoke German, French and English when he arrived in Hawaiʻi, and soon wrote and spoke fluent Hawaiian.

Meyer settled on Molokai. There, he met the Reverend Harvey Rexford Hitchcock I, who accepted him as a house guest at Kaluaʻaha, Molokai.

While living with Reverend Hitchcock, he met High Chiefess Kalama Waha, who later became his wife. Sometime later, he moved his family to Honolulu where he worked for Austin and Becker at an office located on Maunakea Street.

The Meyer family later moved back to Molokai and made their permanent residence at Kalaʻe. They eventually had eleven children, six boys and five girls.

He supported his family, in part, by holding a number of local commissions from the Royal Hawaiian government, but primarily from his diverse agricultural activity.

Ranching began on Molokai in the first half of the 19th-century when Kamehameha V set up a country estate on the island, part of which is now the Molokai Ranch. Rudolph Meyer, one of the first western farmers on Molokai, served as ranch manager for King Kamehameha V. (DLNR)

He planted at various times coffee, corn, wheat, oats, taro, potatoes, beets, cassava, peaches, mangoes, bananas and grapes. He was the first on Molokai to grow, produce and mill sugar and coffee commercially and he exported these to Honolulu and California. He also operated a large dairy from which he produced butter.

Meyer started to grow sugar at the time when the 1876 Reciprocity Treaty between the United States and Hawaiʻi removed the tariff on Hawaiian sugar sold in the United States.

Rather than the expansion and innovation that followed the Treaty, Meyer scaled his mill to satisfy the modest 50- ton annual production from his family’s 30-acres of sugar cane.

Constructed in the 1870s the RW Meyer Sugar Mill is one of the only sites in Hawaiʻi with sufficient material remains intact to demonstrate, fairly completely, a nineteenth-century process of sugar manufacture. The equipment included a mule-driven cane crusher, redwood evaporating pans and some copper clarifiers.

In the early-1880s, when the average investment in Hawaiʻi’s fifth-six sugar plantations exceeded $280,000, the Meyer family investment of $10,000 made their mill one of the smallest in Hawaiʻi.

Meyer adopted and followed mill practices more representative of the 1850s and the 1860s than the 1870s and 1880s. In the 1850s, animals powered the mill equipment; while he stuck with this method into the future, others replaced the animal power with steam and water.

The Meyer Sugar Mill easily accommodated the milling requirements of the family’s sugar lands and repaid the investment within a few years; however, during the 1880s the price paid for sugar steadily declined.

The Planters’ Monthly reported in July, 1887, that “Low prices of sugar still prevail…and many a man who once thought himself assured of reasonable wealth through sugar, now finds that it will not even yield him a competence…only running the sugar business on a large scale can it be made to pay.”

In 1892, CM Hyde reported that the Meyer Mill stopped producing sugar cane when “The low price of the product for the last few years … made it more than unprofitable to engage in sugar manufactured in a small way. Now the lands are given up to grazing.”

Meyer also served as the Superintendent of the isolated Kalawao settlement (Kalaupapa) (serving with Father Damien and Mother Marianne Cope (now, both are Saints)) from 1866 till his death in 1897 (he continued to live with his family at the top of the cliffs, rather than on the Kalaupapa Peninsula.)

He also created one of the first trails used to travel between Kalaupapa Peninsula and the mauka lands. It was used to transport cattle and supplies down to Kalawao.

RW Meyer Ltd still owns property in the southwest corner of the Kalaupapa National Historical Park near the Kalaupapa Trailhead and maintains a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the Park for trail access, maintenance and the planting of native plants. The Meyer Mill has been restored and is operating as a museum. Lots of information here is from NPS and rwmeyer-com.

Follow Peter T Young on Facebook

Follow Peter T Young on Google+

Follow Peter T Young on LinkedIn

Follow Peter T Young on Blogger

Meyer Sugar Mill Museum (Crusher)

Meyer Sugar Mill Museum

April 18, 2020 by Peter T Young 2 Comments

Generations

Ichi, Ni, San, Shi, Go, Roku, Shichi, Hachi, Kyu, Jyu

That’s counting in Japanese, from 1 to 10.

A shortage of laborers to work in the growing (in size and number) sugar plantations became a challenge. The only answer was imported labor.

Starting in the 1850s, when the Hawaiian Legislature passed “An Act for the Governance of Masters and Servants,” a section of which provided the legal basis for contract-labor system, labor shortages were eased by bringing in contract workers from Asia, Europe and North America.

The first to arrive were the Chinese (1852.) The sugar industry grew, so did the Chinese population in Hawaiʻi. Concerned that the Chinese were taking too strong a representation in the labor market, the government passed laws reducing Chinese immigration. Further government regulations, introduced 1886-1892, virtually ended Chinese contract labor immigration.

In 1868, an American businessman, Eugene M Van Reed, sent a group of approximately 150-Japanese to Hawaiʻi to work on sugar plantations and another 40 to Guam. This unauthorized recruitment and shipment of laborers, known as the gannenmono (“first year men”,) marked the beginning of Japanese labor migration overseas. (JANM)

However, for the next two decades the Meiji government prohibited the departure of “immigrants” due to the slave-like treatment that the first Japanese migrants received in Hawaiʻi and Guam. (JANM)

In March 1881, King Kalākaua visited Japan during which he discussed with Emperor Meiji Hawaiʻi’s desire to encourage Japanese nationals to settle in Hawaiʻi.

Kalākaua’s meeting with Emperor Meiji improved the relationship of the Hawaiian Kingdom with the Japanese government and an economic depression in Japan served as motivation for agricultural workers to move from their homeland. (Nordyke/Matsumoto)

The first 943-government-sponsored, Kanyaku Imin, Japanese immigrants to Hawaiʻi arrived in Honolulu aboard the Pacific Mail Steamship Company City of Tokio on February 8, 1885. Subsequent government approval was given for a second set of 930-immigrants who arrived in Hawaii on June 17, 1885.

With the Japanese government satisfied with treatment of the immigrants, a formal immigration treaty was concluded between Hawaiʻi and Japan on January 28, 1886. The treaty stipulated that the Hawaiʻi government would be held responsible for employers’ treatment of Japanese immigrants.

OK, why the initially counting lesson?

As suggested by the title, the respective generations of Japanese in the Islands and elsewhere are identified by the simple numbering pattern. Literally speaking, the Japanese terms Issei, Nisei, Sansei, etc mean first, second and third generation.

The Issei (first generation) were born in Japan and emigrated here from 1885 to 1924 (when Congress stopped all legal migration.) (The Immigration Act of 1924 (aka Johnson-Reed Act) limited the number of immigrants allowed entry into the United States through a national origins quota. It completely excluded immigrants from Asia. (State Department))

Like the other ethnic immigrant groups, the Issei worked on sugar and pineapple plantations. The term Issei came into common use and represented the idea of a new beginning and belonging.

The children of the Issei were the Nisei, the second generation in Hawaiʻi and the first generation of Japanese descent to be born and receive their entire education in America, learning Western values and holding US citizenship.

However, to some degree, preservation of their mother language and culture was reinforced by attending Japanese language schools and by being members of the audience at Japanese cultural plays.

The Nisei hold a significant legacy in Hawaiʻi – this is the generation through the World War II years that included internment for some and service in the US military for many.

In all, between 1,200 and 1,400-local Japanese were interned in Hawaiʻi, along with about 1,000-family members. The number of Japanese in Hawai‘i who were detained was small relative to the total Japanese population here, less than 1%.

By contrast, Executive Order 9066, signed by President Franklin D. Roosevelt on February 19, 1942, authorized the mass exclusion and detention of all Japanese Americans living in the West Coast states, resulting in the eventual incarceration of 120,000-people.

The Nisei made up the storied 442nd Combat Team and 100th Infantry Battalion (which later became the 1st Battalion of the 442nd,) composed entirely of Americans of Japanese ancestry.

Having been born in the Islands, all of the men were citizens of the US; however, very few had ever been to Japan and most of them could not speak Japanese. The “Go For Broke” soldiers of the 442nd are the most decorated infantry regiment in the US Army.

Another term used to describe some of the generations that followed the Issei were the Kibei (return to America) – those who were American born, but who were educated in Japan and returned home to America.

Subsequent generations follow the simple counting patter; the Sansei were children born to the Nisei (the third generation;) Yonsei, the fourth generation – born to at least one Sansei parent and Gosei, the fifth generation – the generation of people born to at least one Yonsei parent, etc.

The Japanese did not just emigrate to Hawaiʻi and the US. Brazil is home to the largest Japanese population outside of Japan (they first started emigrating there in 1908 to work on the coffee plantations.) There were between 1.5-million people of Japanese descent in Brazil; 1.3-million in all of the US, with a little over 185,000 in Hawaiʻi.

Follow Peter T Young on Facebook

Follow Peter T Young on Google+

Follow Peter T Young on LinkedIn

Follow Peter T Young on Blogger

« Previous Page
1
…
7
8
9
10
11
…
16
Next Page »