boards, whose terms are as provided by the laws of the Territory; all must be citizens of the Territory. The judicial power is vested in a supreme court, 5 circuit courts, and 29 district courts, each having a jurisdiction corresponding to similar courts in each state in the Union; and, entirely distinct from these territorial courts, Hawaii has a United States district court. A Supplementary Act of the 3rd of March 1905 provides that writs of error and appeals may be taken from the Supreme Court of Hawaii to the Supreme Court of the United States “in all cases where the amount involved exclusive of costs or value exceeds the sum of five thousand dollars.” The Territory was without the forms of local government common to the United States until 1905, when the Territorial legislature divided it into five counties[1] without, however, giving to them the usual powers of taxation. Each county has the following officers: a board of supervisors, a clerk, a treasurer, an auditor, an assessor and tax-collector, a sheriff and coroner, and an attorney. The members (from five to nine) of the board of supervisors are elected by districts into which the county is divided, usually only one from each. All county officers are elected for a term of two years. The act of 1900 provides for the election of a delegate to Congress, and prescribes that the delegate shall have the qualifications necessary for membership in the Hawaiian Senate, and shall be elected by voters qualified to vote for members of the House of Representatives of Hawaii. As usual, the delegate has a right to take part in the debates in the national House of Representatives, but may not vote.
Charities.—The principal public charity of the Territory is the leper asylum on a peninsula almost 10 sq. m. in area on the N. side of the island of Molokai. A steep precipice forms a natural wall between it and the rest of the island. The place became an asylum for lepers and the caring for them began to be a charity under government charge in 1866; but conditions here were at first unspeakably unhygienic, their improvement being largely due to Father Damien, who devoted himself to this work in 1873. The patients are almost exclusively native Hawaiians, and their number is slowly but steadily decreasing; in 1908 they numbered 791, and there were at Molokai 46 non-leprous helpers and 27 officers and assistants, including the Roman Catholic brothers and sisters in charge of the homes. In 1905 the United States government appropriated $100,000 for a hospital station and laboratory “for the study of the methods of transmission, cause and treatment of leprosy,” and $50,000 a year for their maintenance; the station and laboratory to be established when the territorial government should have ceded to the United States a tract of 1 sq. m. on the leper reservation. The cession was made soon afterward by the territorial government. In 1907–1908 a home for non-leprous boys of leprous parents was established at Honolulu. Another public charity of Hawaii is the general free dispensary maintained by the territorial government at Honolulu.
Education.—Education is universal, compulsory and free. Every child between the ages of six and fifteen must attend either a public school or a duly authorized private school. Consequently the percentage of illiteracy is extremely low. The school system is essentially American in its text-books and in its methods, thanks to the foundations laid by American missionaries. Between 1820 and 1824 the missionaries taught about 2000 natives to read. Several important schools were founded before 1840, when the first written laws were published. Among these was a law providing for compulsory education, and decreeing that no illiterate born after the beginning of Liholiho’s reign should hold office, and that no illiterate man or woman, born after the same date, could marry. The first Hawaiian minister of public instruction was the Rev. William Richards (1792–1847), who held office from 1843 to 1847, and was followed by Richard Armstrong (1805–1860), an American Presbyterian missionary, the father of General S. C. Armstrong. He laid stress on the importance of manual and industrial training during his term of office (1847–1855), and was succeeded by a board of education (1855–1865), of which he was first president; then an inspector-general of schools was appointed, Judge Abraham Fornander being the first inspector; in 1896 an executive department was created under a minister of public instruction and six commissioners; in 1900 a superintendent of public instruction was first appointed. English is by law the medium of instruction in all schools, both public and private, although other languages may be taught in addition. Formal instruction in Hawaiian ceased in 1898. The schools are in session forty weeks during the year. In 1908 there were 154 public schools with 18,564 pupils (27.06% of whom were Japanese, 20.89% Hawaiian, 13.54% part Hawaiian, 18.72% Portuguese and 10.63% Chinese) and 51 private schools with 4881 pupils. A normal school has been established at Honolulu, with a practice school attached to it. The territorial legislature of 1907 established the College of Agriculture and Mechanic Arts of the Territory of Hawaii, and also founded a public library. The Honolulu high school does excellent work and has beautiful buildings and grounds. The Lahainaluna Seminary on west Maui, founded in 1831 as a training school for teachers, furnishes instruction to Hawaiian boys in agriculture, carpentry, printing and mechanical drawing. The boys in the industrial school (1902) at Waialee, on the island of Oahu, are taught useful trades. The teaching of sewing in the public schools has met with great success, and a simple form of the Swedish sloid was introduced into many of the schools in 1894. Lace work was introduced into the public schools in 1903. But the best industrial instruction is furnished by the independent schools, among which the Kamehameha schools take the first place. They were founded by Mrs Bernice Pauahi Bishop (1831–1884), the last lineal descendant of Kamehameha I., who left her extensive landed estates in the hands of trustees for their support. They furnish a good manual and technical training to Hawaiian boys and girls, in addition to a primary and grammar school course of study, and exert a strong religious influence. There are six boarding schools for Hawaiian girls, supported by private resources. The most advanced courses of study are offered by Oahu College, which occupies a beautiful site near the beach just E. of Honolulu; it was founded in 1841 as the Punahou School for missionaries’ children, and was chartered as Oahu College in 1852. It is well equipped with buildings and apparatus, and has an endowment of about $300,000.
Finance.—The revenue of the Territory for the fiscal year ending the 30th of June 1908 amounted to $2,669,748.32, of which $640,051.42 was the proceeds of the tax on real estate, $635,265.81 was the proceeds of the tax on personal property; and among the larger of the remaining items were the income tax ($266,241.74), waterworks ($141,898.04), public lands (sales, $37,585.75; revenue, $122,541.71) and licences ($206,374.28). On the 30th of June 1908 the bonded debt of the Territory was $3,979,000; there was on hand net cash, without floating debt, $677,648.48.
History.—The history of the islands before their discovery by Captain James Cook, in 1778, is obscure.[2] This famous navigator, who named the islands in honour of the earl of Sandwich, was received by the natives with many demonstrations of astonishment and delight; and offerings and prayers were presented to him by their priest in one of the temples; and though in the following year he was killed by a native when he landed in Kealakekua Bay in Hawaii, his bones were preserved by the priests and continued to receive offerings and homage from the people until the abolition of idolatry. At the time of Cook’s visit the archipelago seems to have been divided into three distinct kingdoms: Hawaii; Oahu and Maui; and Lanai and Molokai. On the death of the chief who ruled Hawaii at that time there succeeded one named Kamehameha (1736–1819), who appears to have been a man of quick perception and great force of character. When Vancouver visited the islands in 1792, he left sheep and neat cattle,[3] protected by a ten years’ taboo, and laid down the keel of a European ship for Kamehameha. Ten or twelve years later Kamehameha had 20 vessels (of 25 to 50 tons), which traded among the islands. He afterwards purchased others from foreigners. Having encouraged a warlike spirit in his people and having introduced firearms, Kamehameha attacked and overcame the chiefs of the other kingdoms one after another, until (in 1795) he became undisputed master of the whole group. He made John Young (c. 1775–1835) and Isaac Davis, Americans from one of the ships of Captain Metcalf which visited the island in 1789, his advisers, encouraged trade with foreigners,
- ↑ These are: the county of Hawaii, consisting of the island of the same name; the county of Maui, including the islands of Maui, Lanai and Kahoolawe, and the greater part of Molokai; the county of Kalawao, being the leper settlement on Molokai; the city and county of Honolulu (created from the former county of Oahu by an act of 1907, which came into effect in 1909), consisting of the island of Oahu and various small islands, of which the only ones of any importance are the Midway Islands, 1232 m. from Honolulu, a Pacific cable relay station and a post of the U.S. navy marines; and the county of Kauai, including Kauai and Niihau islands.
- ↑ Their discovery in the 16th century (in 1542 or 1555 by Juan Gaetan, or in 1528 when two of the vessels of Alvaro de Saavedra were shipwrecked here and the captain of one, with his sister, survived and intermarried with the natives) seems probable, because there are traces of Spanish customs in the islands; and they are marked in their correct latitude on an English chart of 1687, which is apparently based on Spanish maps; a later Spanish chart (1743) gives a group of islands 10° E. of the true position of the Hawaiian Islands.
- ↑ The first horses were left by Captain R. J. Cleveland in 1803.
