The roller-coaster story

of labor in Hawaii

Working in Hawaii: A Labor History. By Edward A.

Beechert. Published by Univer sity of Hawaii Press, 1985.

ISBN 0 8248 08908. Price

Sus3O.

This study “examines the social relations of production as they evolved along with the structure of the sugar industry, the politi cal structure of Hawaii, and the consciousness of the worker. ” It is the author’s working assump tion that the “transformation of Hawaiian society by the arrival of western influence and ideas touched every aspect of Hawaiian life.” This was espe cially evident in the changing nature of labor.

The initial chapter summa rises the major cultural char acteristics of traditional Hawaiian society. Changes which occurred after western contact “affected different parts of society at different times and in different ways,” and was apt to be “most dramatic for those living near the centers of Euro pean concentration. ” It is in the port towns and communities that the “system of exchange and labor” was being estab lished.

With particular respect to such a development, Beechert :oncludes that the “transition from a society based upon communal use to one based

upon commodity exchange meant that the Hawaiian com moner now retained many of the obligations of the former relationship but few of its bene fits.”

By the late 1830 s, deter mined efforts to shift the control of labor and land to cash crop enterprises became apparent.

The decline of the Hawaiian population and the influx of expatriates into the islands pre cipitated dramatic changes in the nature of land ownership and control over free labor.

Such changes marked the irreversible move from a largely subsistence economy to a mar ket and wage labor regime.

Freehold land enables entre preneurs to initiate large scale cash crop ventures. The short age of island labor, however, necessitated a concerted search for overseas sources of cheap and available labor to work the burgeoning sugar plantations.

“Behind the facade of the Hawaiian government, the planters drove relentlessly to ward their goal of an adequate labor supply.”

By 1852, the importation of Asian contract labor com menced in earnest with the first shipload of contracted laborers from China. “The principal sources of labor were sufficient ly impressed with the opportun ity for a cash wage that they

came in large numbers. Condi tions at home were sufficiently harsh to make offers from Hawaii seem golden.”

With the enactment of the 1876 Reciprocity Treaty, Hawaiian sugar entered the American market tariff-free.

Though advantage lasted only 15 years, unprecedented prosperity resulted. The re storation of American tariff pro tection for domestic sugar pro duce revived initiatives to annex the islands to the United States, a fact which materialised in 1898.

Once such obstacles were overcome, the major issue for the largely Asiatic labor force was how to secure better wages and living conditions. While the plantations resisted such efforts with a variety of often creative strategies, other members of the socio-economic oligarchy protested against the indignities of the system. “The staggering wealth produced by the sugar industry blinded its proprietors to the defects. Wages were only the most immediate and direct cause of labor unrest. Dignity and opportunity ranked equally high in the minds of the work ers. ” The demands of the plantation labor force were “compounded by the fact that the planters were passing through a stage of transition

between coolie labor and free labor.”

The movement to organise labor unions graduated to mili tant initiatives. The Japanese language press and organisa tion provided a forum to debate the issues of wages, hours, working conditions and “above all, the question of dignity.” In contrast, the Filipino organisa tions had “nothing approaching the local federated structure” characteristic of their Japanese counterparts. The gaps of diffe rent culture and language did not permit mutual understand ing. In the aftermath of the momentous 1920 and 1924 strikes, the territorial govern ment enacted a series of laws designed to “nip in the bud any organising efforts by the Filipino or the Japanese.”

In spite of organising and legislation successes during the 19405, travail continued to per sist in the form of communist party activities within the Hawaii waterfront union. This issue had broader ramifications for the prospect of statehood for the islands in view of some resistance in the American con gress. Beechert concludes that “the history of workers in Hawaii lies in an examination of the lead of working-class con sciousness in response to each stage of development of the Hawaiian political economy.”

Yet, it would be important to note that the “working class has been unable to challenge capitalist hegemony because it is split into factions.” Though “one cannot assume that his tory has stopped at this point or that the basic struggle of class interests has ceased.”

This volume is well research ed and follows a readable his torical scenario. While some theoretical observations are occasionally inserted in the fac tual narrative, there is no com prehensive analysis of the na ture and scope of the changing nature of labor, and how island society itself is changed. Ethnic ity is a dominant characteristic of labor, yet considerably more needs to be said about how each group differs from the other.

This study, however, is pragmatic and useful, and is a significant contribution to an understanding of organised

labor in Hawaii.

William

Tagupa.