THE  JHAWAIIAN 
FORESTER  I AGRICULTURIST 
VOL.  VI  SEPTEMBER,  1909  No.  9 
WATER  RESOURCES  OF  HAWAII . 
The  following  address  zvas  delivered  Sept,  if,  1909,  by  Mr. 
M.  O.  Leighton,  U.  S.  Geological  Survey,  before  the  Commercial 
Club,  Honolulu: 
No  good  business  man  would  operate  a mercantile  establish- 
ment year  after  year  without  taking  account  of  stock;  no  suc- 
cessful manufacturer  would  sell  or  contract  to  deliver  a season's 
product  of  his  factory  unless  he  had  a thorough  knowledge  con- 
cerning the  supply  of  raw  material  entering  into  that  product. 
These  are  self-evident  truths.  Why  then  should  a territory,  the 
bone  and  sinew  of  which  is  made  up  of  hard-headed  business 
men,  expect  to  continue  to  roll  up  an  immense  snowball  repre- 
senting agricultural  success,  when  very  little  is  known  concern- 
ing the  most  necessary  raw  material,  namely,  water  ? 
This  Territory  is  accustomed  to  agricultural  success,  which  is 
the  same  thing  as  saying  that  you  have  had  .sugar  prosperity. 
Therefore,  when  I say  that  you  lack  knowledge  concerning  water 
supplies,  you  may  be  justified  in  pointing  to  your  sugar  crop  re- 
turns and  announcing  that  you  are  getting  along  pretty  well  with- 
out such  knowledge.  So  you  are,  but  can  you  tell  me  how  much 
sugar  failure  you  have  had  because  of  your  lack  of  that  knowl- 
edge? How  many  acres  have  been  abandoned  because  of  lack 
of  water?  How  many  more  acres  would  be  planted  if  wat£r 
were  available?  How  much  greater  would  have  been  your  an- 
nual crops  had  all  the  lands  a sufficient  water  supply?  You  can- 
not tell ; the  Planters’  Association  does  not  know ; no  one  knows. 
Of  this  I am  sure,  because  this  question  is  one  of  the  first  that  I 
asked  when  I came  to  the  Territory.  The  statistician  of  the 
Planters’  Association  informed  me  that  no  attempt  had  ever  been 
made  to  gather  such  information.  The  fact  illustrates  one  pecu- 
liarity that  I have  noted  repeatedly  during  my  visit  here,  It  is 
that  the  people  here  are  so  accustomed  to  success  that  they  fail 
to  appreciate  the  value  of  failure  and  of  negative  results.  So  it 
is  that  no  one  knows  what  the  sugar  failure  has  been  in  Hawaii, 
or  at  least  that  portion  of  it  due  to  ignorance  concerning  water 
resources.  Yet,  in  traveling  over  the  Territory,  significant  cases 
