Japanese labourers upon the plantations. The convention was concluded in March, 1886, and a few more shiploads of Japanese labourers were brought to the islands. And yet news of abuse and inhuman treatment did not cease to filter out of the plantations. The Administration at Tokyo, weary of handling the perplexing problem, determined to put an end to emigration to Hawaii, and with that end in view declined in 1891 to renew the convention of 1886.

By this time, however, many emigration companies had sprung into existence for the purpose of promoting emigration to Hawaii. They were subsidized by the planters, and made much profit by squeezing emigrants. Through the combined efforts of the sugar interests and the emigration companies, the Japanese Government was once again coaxed to reënter into a convention with the Hawaiian Kingdom. All these occurred before the annexation of Hawaii by the United States. Japan's object in concluding labour conventions with the Hawaiian authorities, as may be surmised from the following provisions found in those instruments, was to safeguard the equitable and humane treatment of her emigrant subjects:

1. Each contract was to be signed by the labourer as one party and the Hawaiian Government as the other, at Yokohama, for a period of three years, at a wage of $9 a month and $6 food allowance. The labourer was free to extend this contract for two years more at the time of its expiration.

2. A specified number of Japanese interpreters and physicians were to be employed in behalf of the emigrants, originally at the expense of the Hawaiian Government, but later at the cost of the labourers themselves.

3. The Government of Hawaii was made responsible for damages due for the cruel treatment of labourers.

4. Twenty-five per cent. of the labourer's wages were to be deposited with the Hawaiian Government, to be paid to the labourer upon the expiration of his contract, and to draw five per cent. annual interest during the intervening period.

5. The Hawaiian Government was required to return to Japan immigrants who, on account of permanent disability, were unable to earn their own living, even against the will of the labourer, and also all women found plying immoral traffic.

The annexation of Hawaii by the United States naturally terminated all the labour conventions entered into by the defunct Kingdom, for the Republican Government could not permit the importation of contract labour. The contract labour system under the old régime, with the resultant convention with the Japanese Government, was both beneficial and harmful. It was beneficial in that it afforded the Japanese Government a responsible party to deal with for the security of the well-being of its emigrant subjects, for there was no doubt that the plantation hands needed protection against abuse. The system was, however, harmful in so far as it prevented the growth of the true idea of emigration among the Japanese. Contract labourers are not immigrants. Under the old system the Japanese labourers came to Hawaii to remain there only for three to five years and not to become permanent residents of the country. The Mikado's Government, for fear that its emigrant subjects, if permitted to remain abroad indefinitely, might become destitute or become public charges on account of sickness or accident, required them to return home at the end of their contract terms. This precaution was necessary in dealing

with the labour scheme broached by the Hawaiian planters and the Hawaiian Government, but the very precaution acted to nurture in the bosoms of the emigrants the mistaken idea that the severance of allegiance to their native country, or even their permanent residence abroad, was an act of disloyalty.

This narrow view the islanders of Nippon have not yet completely discarded, notwithstanding their moral leaders and men of affairs earnestly striving to abolish it. The Japanese, having learned their first lessons in emigration on the plantations in Hawaii, brought to the mainland of America the idea which they had got from those lessons. When contract labour was abolished as the result of the amalgamation of Hawaii with the United States, many Japanese migrated from Hawaii to the mainland, but the intention of such Japanese was to remain in the States only long enough to amass a competency. With their experience in foreign affairs widened and their knowledge of conditions abroad becoming clearer, the Japanese have become proportionately more cosmopolitan, bringing about a signal change in their conception of emigration. The Japanese Government itself no longer assumes the paternalistic attitude which it used to assume towards its subjects in Hawaii, as the abolition of contract labour, ensuring fairer treatment of plantation labourers, made such an attitude unnecessary. Indeed the animating spirit among the leading men of Japan is that of cosmopolitanism, and it seems fair to predict that before long this new spirit will completely dissipate the prejudice against expatriation.

As an indication of this new tendency recent utterances of Hon. Yeitaki, the Japanese Consul-General at Honolulu, are significant. At a banquet tendered in his honour by the Japanese residents in Honolulu in

1912, the Consul-General urged that the Japanese in Hawaii should no longer send money to Japan, but should invest it in property or in some commercial or industrial enterprises, with a view to becoming permanent residents of the Territory. Such an utterance is all the more significant when we recall the earlier attitude of the Japanese authorities towards emigrants.

The liberation of the Japanese plantation hands, which was the logical outcome of the abolition of the contract labour system, inevitably resulted in their exodus for the mainland, where wages were higher and conditions of labour much more agreeable. The planters, alarmed by this fresh development of the labour situation, resorted to every means, except the increase of the compensation of labour, to stop the tide of emigration. True, they raised in 1906 the scale of wages, but even the new scale was far lower than what the Japanese labourers were entitled to. The planters persuaded the Territorial Government to enact a law imposing an annual fee of five hundred dollars upon each emigration agent recruiting labourers in Hawaii for the mainland employers. In addition they turned for assistance to the Japanese Consul-General of the time as well as certain classes of Japanese residents in Honolulu, who were on friendly terms with the planters. An organization called the Central Japanese League was the outcome of this effort. How faithfully this association echoed the will of the planters may be gathered from the following resolution adopted at one of its meetings held in 1904: "That the League will request the Imperial Japanese ConsulGeneral to issue advice to the Japanese labourers, setting forth in plain language the many advantages of their remaining in the islands; that it will take all necessary measures to induce the Japanese boarding-house keepers

and others to refrain from giving assistance to those intending to sail for the American coast; that the officials of the local branches of the League be instructed to use their influence in order to prevent the emigration of the labourers; and that it make some arrangement with the steamship companies whereby to check the exodus of Japanese labourers."

The assistance of the Japanese Consul-General was also brought directly into play to stem the migration of his fellow-countrymen to the Coast. In May and June, 1904, a notice from the Consul-General, urging Japanese not to leave Hawaii for the mainland, was found conspicuously posted throughout the islands, in both English and Japanese. And yet the exodus of Japanese labourers did not diminish to any appreciable extent.

The embarrassment caused by the emigration of Japanese labourers for continental United States was coupled with the difficulty resulting from what the planters reproachfully called the "aggressiveness" of these labourers. As a matter of fact their aggressiveness was nothing but a legitimate and just desire to be treated as any human being should be treated. They wanted decent living quarters as well as a scale of wages commensurate to the services they were rendering. They had been awakening to the sense of human rights, but had been unable to give expression to that sense with effectiveness, as long as they were bound hand and foot by the old system of contract labour. In the annexation of Hawaii by the greatest democratic nation in the world those semi-slave labourers from the Orient saw the light of salvation. With contract labour forbidden, they began to breathe more freely. Their "aggressiveness" was the immediate result. Upon the heels of the abolition of penal contracts many strikes were reported. This