50 



THE FUTURE OF HAW AIL 



The following communication from O. P. Austin, Chief of the Bureau 

 of Statistics of the Department of Commerce and Labor, Washington, is 

 sufficiently interesting to our readers to reproduce in full: 



DEPARTMENT OF COMMERCE AND LABOR, BUREAU OF 

 STATISTICS, WASHINGTON. 



January 30, 1907. 



Dear Sir: I beg to express to you my thanks for the map which 

 you send me, entitled * ' Crossroads of the Pacific. " It is a very inter- 

 esting and striking presentation of the importance of Hawaii to the 

 commerce of the Pacific, and of the commerce of the Pacific to Ha- 

 waii; and whether we consider it in the first mentioned light, of the 

 importance of Hawaii to Pacific commerce, or in the second, of the im- 

 portance of the Pacific commerce to Hawaii, we can but see in it a bright 

 future for the Hawaiian Islands and their people. That the commerce 

 of the Pacific is sure to grow in the immediate future more rapidly than 

 that of any other ocean section of the world is generally conceded and 

 indeed can not be doubted when we take into consideration the prospect 

 that we shall within a few years open a new door to that greatest of 

 oceans, the door of the Panama canal. Not only is it the greatest of 

 oceans, but it furnishes the highway for interchange between great sec- 

 tions of the world which are mutually interdependent, and in those inter- 

 changes Hawaii can but profit as the great central station, the cross- 

 roads, as your map very aptly puts it, of the various highways connect- 

 ing Asia and Oceania on the one hand with America on che other, and 

 when the Panama canal shall be opened, with Europe also. 



But there is another thought which I want to take this occasion to 

 express, and that is that the true prosperity of Hawaii lies, in my opin- 

 ion, in the development of highways in the interior of the islands rather 

 than highways on the ocean. By this I inean that the greatest pros- 

 perity which could come to your islands is through an opening up of Ihe 

 interior and such diversification of industries and producing power as 

 would be possible under such conditions. A section able to produce such 

 a variety of tropical articles as may be produced in the Hawaiian 

 Islands, and having free access to a market demanding such enormous 

 quantities of those various articles as does the market of the United 

 States, ought to become not merely prosperous, as it already is, but one 

 of the most prosperous and perhaps the most prosperous of all the 

 tropical communities of the world. With the power to produce sugar, 

 of which the United States imports more than one hundred million dol- 

 lars' worth a year; with the power to produce coffee, of which we im- 

 port from seventy-five million to one hundred million dollars' worth an- 

 nually; with the powder to grow rubber, of which we import fifty million 

 dollars' worth annually; with the power to produce tropical fruits, of 

 which we import thirty-five million dollars' worth annually; with the 

 power to produce sisal, of which we import fifteen million dollars' worth 

 annually; and with the power to produce cocoa, of which we import 

 nearly ten million dollars' worth annually, the possibiblities of increased 

 prosperity in Hawaii seem to me very great, and if you can bring about a 

 development of '* crossroads" in the interior of your islands, as com- 

 merce has already made those islands the crossroads of the ocean, you 

 will see a still further improvement in that wonderful prosperity of 

 which we are, all of us so proud. 



Very truly yours, 



O. P. AUSTIN, Chief of Bureau. 

 Mr. H. P. Wood, Secretarj^, The Hawaii Promotion Committee, 

 Honolulu, Hawaii. 



