With the War over, the ILWU began a concerted campaign to win representation of sugar workers using the new labor laws. Plantations and the military worked out an arrangement whereby the army could borrow workers. There were no unions as we know them today and so these actions were always temporary combinations or blocs of workers joining together to resolve a particular "hot" issue or to press for some immediate demands. These were the years of World War I. War-induced inflation raised the cost of living in Hawai'i by 115%. In 1894 the Planters' journal complained: "The tendency to strike and desert, which their well nigh full possession of the labor market fosters, has shown planters the great importance of having a percentage of their laborers of other nationalities. Arrests of strike leaders was used to destroy the workers solidarity. . As a result, US laws prohibiting contracts of indentured servitude replaced the. The Hawaiian Star reported the Spreckelsville strike of June 20, 1900, in the following manner: " . In addition, if the contract laborer tried to run away, the law permitted their employers to use coercive force such as bounty hunters to apprehend them as if they were runaway slaves. The owners brought in workers from other countries to further diversify the workforce. On September 9th, 1924 outraged strikers seized two scabs at Hanap p , Kaua'i and prevented them from going to work. They and their families, in the thousands, left Hawaii and went to the Mainland or returned to their homelands or, in some cases, remained in the islands but undertook new occupations. Here is a look at the way the labor movement used to talk about the Organic Act. We must not simply enjoy the benefits gained from those who worked so hard in the past without consideration for the future. On Kauai and in Hilo, the Longshoremen were building a labor movement based on family and community organizing and multi-ethnic solidarity. Wages were frozen at the December 7 level. (Coleman) Early reminders of American slavery to folks in the Islands were Anthony Allen and Betsey Stockton. The years of the 1930s were the years of a world wide economic depression. A young lawyer named Motoyuki Negoro pointed out the injustice of unequal wages in a series of articles he wrote for a Japanese newspaper. This strike was led by Jack Edwardson, Port Agent of the Sailors Union of the Pacific. The former slave-owners who turned to Hawaii's sugar industry were wary of contracting Black labor to work on plantations, though a few small groups of Black contract laborers did work on . The Hawaiian sugar industry expanded to meet these needs and so the supply of plantation laborers had to be increased as well. Meanwhile they used the press to plead their cause in the hope that public opinion would move the planters. As early as 1857 there was a Hawaiian Mechanics Benefit Union which lasted only a few years. Anti-labor laws constituted a constant threat to union organizers. Due to the collaborative work of the unions, in combination with other civil rights actions, today all ethnicities can enjoy middle-class mobility and reach for the American dream. Harry Kamoku was the model union leader. The Association initiated a polite request to the Planter's Association asking for a conference and appealing to the planters for "reason and justice." Ariyoshi would in the early 1970s be instrumental in establishing the Ethnic Studies Department at UH Manoa. Native Hawaiian laborers walked off the job in unity to show that they would not put up with intolerable and inhumane work conditions. We must each, in our way, confront the deeper questions: What can we do to ensure that the hard-won freedoms that we have been entrusted with are not stripped away from the bloody hands who fought for them? Poho, Poho. The next crop, called the "first ratoon," takes another 15 months. by Andrew Walden (Originally published June 14, 2011) The Organic Act, bringing US law to bear in the newly-annexed Territory of Hawaii took effect 111 years ago--June 14, 1900. The formation of the Hawaiian Anti-Slavery Society was a culmination of an early antislavery movement in Hawai'i that was mostly concentrated between the years 1837 and 1841. The first commercially viable sugar cane plantation began in 1835 by Ladd and Company in Koloa, Kauai. Hawaii was the first U.S. possession to become a major destination for immigrants from Japan, and it was profoundly transformed by the Japanese presence. However, much of its economy and the daily life of its residents were controlled by powerful U.S.-based businesses, many of them large fruit and sugar plantations. There is also a sizeable Cape Verdean American . Lee, advised the planters in these words: MASTERS AND SERVANTS (Na Haku A Me Na Kauwa): The Africans in Hawaii, also known as Ppolo in the Native Hawaiian language, are a minority of 4.0% of the population including those partially Black, and 2.3% are of African American, Afro-Caribbean, or African descent alone. One of Koji Ariyoshi's columnists, Frank Marshall Davis--like Ariyoshi, also a Communist Party member, was a mentor to Barack Obama from age 10-18 (described as "Frank" in "Dreams from My Father"). In 1966 the Hawai'i Locals of the AFL-CIO joined together in a State Federation. Slave breeding was the attempt by a slave-owner to increase the reproduction of his slaves for profit. Slavery and voter disenfranchisement were built-in to the laws by those who stood to make obscene profits by exploiting both the land of Hawaii and its people. Pitting the ethnic groups against each other prevented the workforce from banding together to gain power and possibly start a revolt. Only one canner stays in Hawaii, the Maui Land and Pineapple Company, Island," as although the citizens have been mere plantation slaves. Although Hawaii never had slavery, the sugar plantations were based on cheap imported labor from Maderia, and many parts of Asia. Just go on being a poor man. Later this group became the White Mechanics and Workmen and in 1903 it became the Central Labor Council affiliated with the American Federation of Labor. The islands were governed as an oligarchy, not a democracy, and the Japanese immigrants struggled to make lives for themselves in a land controlled almost exclusively by large commercial interests. They preferred to work for themselves and take care of their families by fishing and farming. Martial law was declared in the Territory and union organization on the plantations was brought to a sudden halt. Between 1885 and 1924, more than 200,000 Japanese immigrated to Hawaii as plantation laborers until their arrivals suddenly stopped with the Federal Immigration Act of 1924. They were not permitted to leave the plantation in the evenings. Union contracts protected workers from reprisals due to political activity. As Japanese sugar workers became more established in the plantation system, however, they responded to management abuse by taking concerted action, and organized major strikes in 1900, 1906, and 1909, as well as many smaller actions. The rest of this story is about historical revisionismand a walk through several decades of irony. All but one of the 34 largest plantations were impacted. Members were kept informed and involved through a democratic union structure that reached into every plantation gang and plantation camp. Their business interests require cheap, not too intelligent, docile, unmarried men.". And so in 1954 Labor campaigned openly and won a landslide for union endorsed candidates for the Territorial Legislature. Early struggles for wage parity were also aimed at attempts to separate neighbor island wage standards from those of Honolulu City & County. A song of the day captures the feelings of these first Hawaiian laborers: Nonoke au i ka maki ko, Hawaii became the new sugar production center for the US. But the strike was well organized, well led and well disciplined, and shortly after the walkout the employers granted increases to the workers who were on "Contract", that is working a specified area on an arrangement similar to sharecropping. Spying and infiltration of the strikers ranks was acknowledged by Jack Butler, executive head of the HSPA.27 Upon their arrival there, the Japanese at a signal gathered together, about two hundred of them and attacked the police.". And the Territory became subject to the Chinese Exclusion Act, a racist American law which halted further importation of Chinese laborers. This had no immediate effect on the workers pay, hours and conditions of employment, except in two respects. In this new period it was no longer necessary to resort to the strike to gain recognition for the union. On June 11th, the chief of police banned all public speeches for the duration of the strike. The Higher Wage Association was wrecked. There were rules as to when they had to be in bed -usually by 8:30 in the evening - no talking was allowed after lights out and so forth.17 Again workers were turned out of their homes. The Role Of Plantation Workers In The Development Of The Sugar Industry Labor was also influential in getting improved schools, colleges, public services and various health and welfare agencies. The Planters acknowledged receipt of the letter but never responded to the request for a conference. Because most of the strikers had been Japanese, the industrial interests and the local newspapers intensified their attacks upon this racial group. 1 no. Each planter had a private army of European American overseers to enforce company rules, and they imposed harsh fines, or even whippings, for such offenses as talking, smoking, or pausing to stretch in the fields. The struggle for justice in the workplace has been a consistent theme in our islands since the sugar plantation era began in the 1800s. Africans in Hawaii - Wikipedia However, things changed on June 14, 1900 when Hawaii was formally recognized as a U.S. territory. As to Waikiki, I first learned about the rape of the land during a visit to the lookout point up on Tantalus. However they worked independently of each other. Far better work day by day, It was a reverse Tower of Babel experience. It cost the Japanese community $40,000 to maintain the walkout. Thirty-four sugar plantations once thrived in Hawaii. In fact, most were 7Europeans who did not hesitate to apply the whips they carried constantly with them to enforce company discipline.16 This was commonplace on the plantations. These were not strikes in the traditional sense. The strike of 1934 in particular finally established the right of a bona fide union to exist on the waterfront, and the lesson wasn't lost on their Hawaiian brothers. Many immigrants surprisingly found themselves in unfavorable working conditions enslaved in the fields or in the mills, enduring constant pain and suffering clinging to the hope that they would be able improve the quality of life for their families, all the while enriching their employers. Under the Wagner Act the union could petition for investigation and certification as the sole and exclusive bargaining representative of the employees. In the years that followed the Labor Movement was able to win through legislative action, many benefits and protections for its membership and for working people generally: Pre-Paid Health Care, Temporary Disability Insurance, Prevailing Wage laws, improved minimum wage rates, consumer protection, and no-fault insurance to name only a few. In 1853, indigenous Hawaiians made up 97% of the islands' population. In 1836 the first 8,000 pounds (3,600 kg) of sugar and molasses was shipped to the United States. EARLY STRIKES: A shipload of black laborers left after one year of labor in Hawaii to return to the South. On August 1st, 1938 over two hundred men and women belonging to several different labor unions in Hilo attempted to peacefully demonstrate against the arrival of the SS Waialeale in Hilo. As early as 1901 eleven unions, mostly in the building trades, formed the first labor council called the Honolulu Federation of Trades. More than any other single event the 1946 sugar strike brought an end to Hawaii's paternalistic labor relations and ushered in a new era of participatory democracy both on the plantations and throughout Hawaii's political and social institutions. And there was close to another million and a half acres that were considered government lands.4 The bombs that dropped on Pearl Harbor also temporarily bombed out the hopes of the unions. The Associated Press flashed the story of what followed across the nation in the following words: I fell in debt to the plantation store. In April 1924 a strike was called on the island of Kauai. For the harvest, workers walk through the pineapple rows, dressed in thick gloves and clothing to protect them from the spiky bromeliad leaves. In 1922 Pablo Manlapit was again active among them and had organized a new Filipino Higher Wage Movement which claimed 13,000 members. I fell in debt to the plantation store, The UH Ethnic Studies Department created the anti-American pseudo-history under which the Organic Act is now regarded as a crime instead of a victory for freedom. This system was similar to the plantation slavery system that existed in other parts of the world, such as the Caribbean. The plantation features the world's largest maze, grown entirely out of Hawaiian plants. This vicious "red-baiting" was unrelenting and stirred public sentiment against the strikers, but the Union held firm, and the employers steadfastly rejected the principle of parity and the submission of the dispute to arbitration. Late in the 1950's the tourist industry began to pick up steam. These provisions were often used to put union leaders out of circulation in times of tension and industrial conflict. This essay is based on secondary scholarship and seeks to introduce the reader to the issue of labor on sugar plantations in nineteenth-century Hawaii while highlighting the similarities and differences between slavery and indentured labor. The workday was long, the labor exhausting, and, both on the job and off, the workers' lives were strictly controlled by the plantation owners. How do we ensure that these hard-earned gains will be handed down to not only our children but also our grandchildren, and great-grandchildren? Most of them were lost, but they had an impact on management. E noho no e hana ma ka la, But when hostilities ended they formed a new organization called the Federation of Japanese Labor and began organizing on all islands. Hawaii's Masters and Servants Act of 1850 The Old Sugar Mill, established in 1835 by Ladd & Co., is the site of the first sugar plantation. In the years following the 1909 strike, the employers did two things to ward off future stoppages. The newly elected legislators were mostly Democrats. The ordinary workers got pay raises of approximately $270,000. Of 600 men who had arrived in the islands voluntarily, they sent back 100. Yet, the islands natural Spirit of Aloha through collaboration and mutual trust and respect eventually prevailed in the plantations. As contract laborers their bodies were practically the property of the sugar planters, to be abused and even whipped with black snake whips. But when the strike was over public pressure mounted for their release and they were pardoned by Secretary of the Territory, Earnest Mott-Smith. The Plantation System - National Geographic Society Sugar and pineapple could dominate the economic, social and. Women had it worse. And what of the sugar companies? The cumulative effect of all of those strikers was positive: within a year, wages increased by 10 cents a day to 70 cents a day. Bennet Barrow, the owner of nearly 200 slaves on his cotton plantation in Louisiana, noted his plantation rules in his diary on May 1, 1838, the source of the following selection. The strike was finally settled with a wage increase that brought the dock workers closer to but not equal to the West Coast standard, but it was certain the employers were in disarray and had to capitulate. Their strategy was to flood the marketplace with immigrant laborers, thereby enabling the owners to lower wages, knowing workers had no other option but to accept the wages or be jobless and possibly disgrace their families. Although Hawaii's plantation system provided a hard life for immigrant workers, at the same time the islands were the site of unprecedented cultural autonomy for Japanese immigrants. American militia came to the island, threatening battle, and Liliuokalani surrendered. Hawaii's plantation slavery was characterized by a system in which large numbers of laborers were brought to the islands to work on sugar plantations. The Unity House unions, under the leadership of Arthur Rutledge, which covered hotel and restaurant workers plus teamsters, reached a growth in 1973 of about 12,000 members. Typically, the bosses now became disillusioned with both Japanese and Filipino workers. The documents of the defense were seized at the office of the Japanese newspaper which supported the strike. The bonus system to be made a legal obligation rather than a matter of benevolence. The local press, especially the Honolulu Advertiser, vilified the Union and its leadership as communists controlled by the Soviet Union. Although there were no formal organized unions, that year 25 strikes were documented. A aie au i ka hale kuai. Discontent among the workers seethed but seldom surfaced. Instead of practicing their traditional skills, farming, fishing, canoe-building, net-making, painting kau`ula tapas, etc., Hawaiians had become "mere vagabonds": THE GREAT MAHELE: Twenty-five strikes were recorded that year. One year after the so-called "Communist conspiracy" trials, the newly won political rights of the working people asserted itself in a dramatic way. The English language press opposed the workers demands as did a Japanese paper that was pro-management. The earliest strike on record was by the Hawaiian laborers on Kloa Plantation in 1841. Tens of thousands of plantation laborers were freed from contract slavery by the Organic Act. 5. The first crop, called a "plant crop," takes 18-20 months to be ready for harvest. Hawaiis sugar plantation workers toiled for little pay and zero benefits. The planters ignored the request. The people picked up their few belongings and families by the hundreds, by the thousands, began the trek into Honolulu. In the days before commercial airline, nearly all passenger and light freight transport between the Hawaiian islands was operated by the Inter-Island Steamship Co. fleet of 4 ships. In the trial of the leaders, which began on July 26th, the only evidence against them was the Japanese newspaper articles and these were translated in such a way as to twist the words and give them a more violent meaning. The Japanese immigrants were no strangers to hard, farm labor. Thats also where the earliest recorded labor strike occurred just six years later. Even the famous American novelist Samuel Clemens, better known as Mark Twain, while visiting the islands in 1866 was taken in by the planters' logic. James Dole Hawaii's plantation history is one of sugar cane and pineapples. The Waimanalo workers did not walk off their jobs but gave financial aid as did the workers on neighboring islands. I decided to quit working for money, The whales, like the native Hawaiians, were being reduced in population because of the hunters. Honolulu Record, August 19, 1948, vol. All Americans are supposed to suffer from this secular version of original sin and forever seek the absolutions dispensed by the self-appointed high-priests of political correctness. From 1944 to 1946 membership rose from 900 to 28,000 as one by one plantation after plantation voted overwhelmingly for the union. A aie au i ka hale kuai, WHALING: Military rule for labor meant: The 1946 Sugar Strike Though they were only asking for twenty-five cents a day, with no actual union organization the workers lost this strike just as so many others were destined to suffer in the years ahead. . The workers received 41 cents an hour but the Planters were paid 62 cents for each worker they loaned out. For example, Local 745 of the Carpenter's Union in Hawaii is the largest in the International Brotherhood of Carpenters. All told, the Planters collected about $6 million dollars for workers and equipment loaned out in this way. On June 12, 1941, the first written contract on the waterfront was achieved by the ILWU, the future of labor organizing appeared bright until December and the bombing of Pearl Harbor through the territory into a state of martial law for the next four years. It is estimated that between 1850 and 1900 about 46,000 Chinese came to Hawai'i. Luna, the foreman or supervisors of the plantations, did not hesitate to wield their power with whips to discipline plantation workers for getting out of line. The 1949 longshore strike was a pivotal event in the development of the ILWU in Hawaii and also in the development of labor unity necessary for a modern labor movement. To ensure the complete subjugation of Labor, the Territorial Legislature passed laws against "criminal syndicalism, anarchistic publications and picketing. - Twenty persons dead, unnumbered injured lying in hospital, officers under orders to shoot strikers as they approached, distracted widows with children tracking from jails to hospitals and morgues in search of missing strikers - this was the aftermath of a clash between cane strikers and workers on the McBryde plantation, Tuesday at Hanapp , island of Kauai. Hawaii: Life in a Plantation Society | Japanese | Immigration and The Inter-Island Steamship Navigation Co. had since 1925 been controlled by Matson Navigation and Castle & Cooke. In 1848 the king was persuaded to apply yet another force to the already rapidly evolving Hawaiian way of life. All for nothing. In 1961 President John F. Kennedy issued an Executive Order which recognized the right of Federal workers to organize for the purpose of collective bargaining. Tens of thousands of plantation laborers were freed from contract slavery by the Organic Act. Their lyrics [click here] give us an idea of what their lives must have been like. Workers in Hilo and on Kauai were much better organized thanks to the Longshoremen so that when Inter-Island was eventually able to get the SS. 200 Years of Black History and Experience in Hawaii In the early years, the Hawaiian Pineapple Company was . Waialeale back into service at the end of July, sympathetic unionists there were prepared to demonstrate their support for the striking workers. Hawaii Plantation Slavery. Plantation owners would purchase slaves from slave traders, who would then transport the slaves to Hawaii. This was followed within the next two weeks by plantations at Waipahu, Ewa, Kahuku, Waianae, and Waialua. For those contract laborers who found conditions unbearable and tried to run away, again the law permitted their employers "coercive force" to apprehend them, and their contracts on the plantation would be extended by double the period of time they had been away. The term plantation can reference several different realities. By 1968 unions were so thoroughly accepted as a part of the Hawaiian scene that it created no furor when unions in the public sector of the economy asked that the right of collective bargaining by public employees be written into the State Constitution. The Japanese Plantation Workers In Hawaii | AftonVilla.com But the time was not ripe in the depression years. Pablo Manlapit, who was imprisoned and then exiled returned to the islands in 1932 and started a new organization, this time hoping to include other ethnic groups. As the 19th century came to a close, there was very little the working men and women could show for their labors. For a while it looked as though militant unionism on the plantations was dead. There were no major strikes although 41 labor disturbances are on record in this period. This new era for labor in Hawai'i, it is said, arose at the water's edge and at the farthest reach from the power center of the Big 5 in Honolulu. The Planters' journal said of them in 1888, "These people assume so readily the customs and habits of the country, that there does not exist the same prejudice against them that there is with the Chinese, while as laborers they seem to give as much satisfaction as any others. But Abolitiononce a key part of the story of labor in Hawaii--gets swept under the rug in the Akaka Tribes rush for land and power. The Black population is mostly concentrated in the Greater Honolulu area, especially near military installations. SUGAR: Every member had a job to do, whether it was walking the picket line, gathering food, growing vegetables, cooking for the communal soup kitchens, printing news bulletins, or working on any of a dozen strike committees. Though they had to struggle against European American owners for wages and a decent way of life, Japanese Hawaiians did not have to face the sense of isolation and fear of racial attacks that many Japanese immigrants to the West Coast did. However, when workers requested a reasonable pay increase to 25 cents a day, the plantation owners refused to honor their fair request. 2, p. 8. How Fruit Tycoons Overthrew Hawaii's Last Queen Native Hawaiians, who had been accustomed to working only for their chiefs and only on a temporary basis as a "labor tax" or Auhau Hana, naturally had difficulty in adjusting to the back-breaking work of clearing the land, digging irrigation ditches, planting, fertilizing, weeding, and harvesting the cane, for an alien planter and on a daily ten to twelve hour shift. My back ached, my sweat poured, On May 26 a strike was called and after three weeks the company began to recruit replacements to get the ships running again and break the unions. Just go on being a poor man, The mantle of his leadership was taken over by Antonio Fagel who organized the Vibora Luviminda on the island of Maui. The Hawaiian, Chinese and Portuguese were paid $1.50 a day which was more than double the earnings of the Japanese workers they replaced. By the 1930s, Japanese immigrants, their children, and grandchildren had set down deep roots in Hawaii, and inhabited communities that were much older and more firmly established than those of their compatriots on the mainland. After 8 months, the strike disintegrated, illustrating once again that racial unionism was doomed to failure. The decade after 1909 was a dark one for Labor. a month for 26 days of work. A permanent result of these struggles can be seen in the way that local unions in Hawai'i are all state-wide rather than city or county based. The dividing up of the land known as "The Great Mahele" in that year introduced and institutionalized the private ownership or leasing of land tracts, a development which would prove to be indispensable to the continued growth of the sugar growing industry. VIBORA LUVIMINDA: Plantation life was also rigidly stratified by national origin, with Japanese, Chinese, and Filipino laborers paid at different rates for the same work, while all positions of authority were reserved for European Americans. This paper was a case study for Richard Eaton's World History: Slavery seminar at the University of Arizona.