THE JRRIGA TION A GE. 



(2) It will increase the commerce of the 

 Islands and secure it to us. (3) It will 

 increase the Islands' shipping business 

 and secure it to us. (4) It will promote 

 pqace by removing Hawii from interna- 

 tional politics. Probably the most impor- 

 tant consideration, however, in the eyes 

 of western people is the effect of annexa- 

 tion upon the sugar industry. Our beet 

 sugar industry is new and any decided op- 

 position orcompetition would seriously in- 

 jure it. In reply to this objection, Mr. 

 Thurston states that Hawaii can never 

 produce enough to supplant beet sugar. 

 The sugar consumption of the United 

 States was approximately 2,500,000 tons 

 in 1896 and is rapidly increasing. Hawaii 

 produces a little over 200,000 tons annu- 

 ally, and all the natural cane lands are 

 already under cultivation. The United 

 States need the Islands and the Islands 

 need this country. We cannot afford to 

 allow England or Japan or any other na- 

 tion likely sometime to become hostile, 

 to obtain possession of the Gibraltar of 

 the Pacific, 



The There are 60,000 boy tramps 



Pounding of ,, ,. . , 



Brightside. at large in the United States 

 according to statistics. When they are 

 caught in the commission of some misde- 

 meanor they are sent to the reform school 

 or the peniteniary. Association with 

 others as rough as themselves or with the 

 hardened characters thieves and murder- 

 ers in the penitentiaries, kills every 

 nobler aspiration and all sense of moral 

 obligation which the boys may have 

 possessed. They become criminals and 

 are a menace to society and a charge upon 

 the public. A young man named Ralph 

 Field after some experience in being buf- 

 feted about the world himself, determined 

 to found a school for boys of this kind. ' 

 Slight of stature, in ill health, without a 

 dollar in the world, with nothing but the 

 conviction that was within him, he went 

 to work. In an old ramshackle, empty 

 barn, without even a chair to sit upon the 

 school was christened Brightside, because 

 it meant a brighter side in the lives of the 



homeless, deserted, sin-hardened boys of 

 the country. In Denver on August 4,1893, 

 the teacher and one lone scholar, a young 

 tramp, spent the only ten cent piece they 

 possessed in all the world for some crackers 

 and sat down in the empty barn to eat 

 their first meal together, and that night 

 they slept on the pine boards. Filled with 

 lofty ideals, Ralph Field devoted himself 

 assiduously to his self-constituted task. 

 Day and night, in misery, in hunger, in 

 sickness, he toiled on. Four more young 

 tramps ceased their roving and joined the 

 school before the end of the first week. 

 The school continued to grow. The fol- 

 lowing from the editor of the Rocky Moun- 

 tain News shows with life-like distinctness 

 the conditions: 



"Some boy whose parents had driven 

 him from home; another whose mother 

 was a drunkard or worse; another shoeless, 

 hatless, coatless and starved; another 

 without either father or mother and who 

 had been cuffed from every door at which 

 he had applied for food; another hiding 

 from the police it was from such as these 

 that the school was recruited. Teacher 

 and pupils slept together on the floor 

 often ate together, washed the dishes 

 together, swept the rooms and made the 

 makeshift beds in company. As. it grew 

 Ralph Field worked the harder. He so- 

 licited food, old clothes and odds and ends 

 of furniture. He did the begging him- 

 self. He would not permit a boy to beg. 

 The first lesson he impressed on each and 

 all was that they were not charity chil- 

 dren, that the work they did about the 

 place earned them the food, clothing and 

 education he provided. While he begged, 

 he didn't consider it begging. He was 

 nerved with the conviction that his work 

 was for the public; he was saving the boys 

 both body and soul. He was making good 

 citizens out of those who would otherwise 

 prey upon society. To obtain food, cloth- 

 ing and shelter for such as these was com- 

 pensation his compensation, therefore, 

 neither lie nor the hoys were in any sense 

 dependent." 



