POLICY IN RAROTONGA

Waikato Times, Volume 118, Issue 19664, 26 August 1935, Page 4

POLICY IN RAROTONGA

AMERICAN IMPRESSED. HAWAII UNFAVOURABLY COMPARED COCONUT PLANTER ON TOUR. “I think the policy of New Zealand In Rarotonga is much better than that of the United States in Hawaii," said Mr C. Hills, a coconut planter, of Kauai Island, who reached Christchurch recently In the course of a holiday four. “Your Government is doing well in encouraging the natives in their arts and their own ways of life, and in keeping out Chinese and other foreign elements. The hurricanes are just too bad. We saw signs of the last one in the huge, uprooted trees that lay all around the beaches.” "Kauai is the garden island of the Hawaii group,” said Mr Hills. “It lies a hundred miles north of Honolulu, and has an area of 540 square miles. We have a varied climate, with summer heat on the seashore, and nice, cool temperatures up the mountain slopes, which rise 3500 ft.” There was a population of 35.000 persons, mostly Japanese and Filipinos who had been imported to work in the sugar fields. Kauai produced 200,000 .tons of sugar a year and 1.000,000 cases of pineapples. Mr Hills is a coconut planter, shipping the nuts to California, unhusked, for human consumption. It was impossible to make copra production pay, he -said. “We all think it’s a mistake,” said Mr Hills, when asked what was the attitude of Americans in Hawaii to the United States relinquishing its sovereignty over the Philippines. “I suppose the Democrat Party had to make some change in administration, and there you are."