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Water Rights and Cabinet Shuffles: How Claus Spreckels' Hawaiian Career Began

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 July 2012

Jacob Adler
Jacob Adler
Affiliation:
Associate Professor of Economics and Business atUniversity of Hawaii
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Abstract

Many Hawaiians viewed the great irrigation project and its vigorous promoter with enthusiasm and awe. Unfortunately, not all aspects of American entrepreneurship were palatable to the Islanders.

Type
Research Article
Information
Business History Review , Volume 34 , Issue 1 , Spring 1960 , pp. 50 - 63
Copyright
Copyright © The President and Fellows of Harvard College 1960

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References

1 Spreckels was born in Lamstedt, Germany. After early years of comparative poverty, he became a part of that process by which some of the most energetic and resourceful persons in Europe reached America. He landed in Charleston, South Carolina, about 1847. Here, and later in New York, he achieved moderate success in the grocery business. In 1855, when the gold rush fever was still burning, he set out for San Francisco. He found “gold” in a grocery store, a brewery, and ultimately in sugar refining, the field in which he reached his greatest fame. By 1875 he was one of the leading refiners of the West Coast. Eventually he became known as the “sugar king” of California and Hawaii.

2 Sugar in Hawaii (Honolulu: Hawaiian Sugar Planters' Association, 1949), p. 17Google Scholar.

3 In recent years the Hawaiian sugar industry has needed about 1,600,000,000 gallons of water a day. Much of this has been provided by investments of about $50,000,000 in irrigation. Thrum's, Hawaiian Annual for 1954 (Honolulu: Star-Bulletin, 1955), p. 42Google Scholar.

4 Pacific Commercial Advertiser, May 22, 1875.

5 Pacific Commercial Advertiser, June 5, 1875.

6 Ibid.

7 Pacific Commercial Advertiser, Aug. 26, 1876. Mention of the Reciprocity Treaty with the United States deserves further emphasis. When Spreckels was being interviewed in 1893 by Commissioner J. H. Blount, who had been sent by President Cleveland to investigate the overthrow of the monarchy, the sugar king indicated that the treaty had furnished the chief stimulus to irrigation projects. U. S. Congress, Senate, Hawaiian Islands: Report of the Committee on Foreign Relations (2 vols.; Washington: Government Printing Office, 1894), Vol. II (1782–1783)Google Scholar.

8 Alexander, W. D., History of Later Years of the Hawaiian Monarchy (Honolulu, 1896), p. 3Google Scholar; Directory of the Hawaiian Kingdom, 1880–1881 (San Francisco, 1881), p. 506Google Scholar.

9 Pacific Commercial Advertiser, Oct. 12, 1878.

10 Pacific Commercial Advertiser, April 7, 1877.

11 Hawaiian Gazette, March 27, 1878.

12 Pacific Commercial Advertiser, May 4, 1878; Hawaiian Gazette, May 8, 1878.

13 Pacific Commercial Advertiser, May 4, 1878. The Wailuku Commons was at a greater distance from Mount Haleakala than the area to be irrigated by the Hamakua ditch of Baldwin and Alexander.

14 Pacific Commercial Advertiser, Oct. 12, 1878.

15 Lease of Wailuku crown lands to Claus Spreckels by Commissioners of Crown Lands, effective July 1, 1878, book 55, pp. 196–200; book 57, pp. 299–304. Bureau of Conveyances, Honolulu.

16 Copy of the petition is in file “Water — Maui — Molokai — Sundries, 1866–1885,” Archives of Hawaii.

17 Gibson became premier in 1882. He held so many offices that he became known as “minister of everything.” Gibson, Spreckels, and King Kalakaua formed a triumvirate which controlled the government to about the middle of 1886.

18 Spreckels' attempt to get the water rights may have been a factor in the motion of lack of confidence. However, there had been much friction on other matters between ministry and legislature, and ministry and king.

19 Hawaiian Gazette, July 10, 1878.

20 Hawaiian Gazette, July 3, 1878.

21 Wodehouse to “My Lord,” July 8, 1878. FO 58/162, pp. 78, 79, British Public Records Office. (On microfilm, University of Hawaii Library, Honolulu.)

22 Comly to Secretary of State, No. 43, July 8, 1878. Dispatches from U. S. Ministers in Hawaii, National Archives. (On microfilm, University of Hawaii Library, Honolulu.)

23 Hawaiian Gazette, July 17, 1878. Letter signed “Hawaii.” For a first-hand report of the meeting at Kaumakapili church, see Ko Hawaii Pae Aina (Hawaiian language newspaper), July 13, 1878Google Scholar. Report signed by C. P. Iaukea who was secretary of the meeting.

24 Pacific Commercial Advertiser, Oct. 5, 1878, citing portions of an article in the Alta California, Sept. 5, 1878.

25 Kalakaua Cash Book, Archives of Hawaii, p. 51.

26 C. C. Harris to E. H. Allen, Oct. 4, 1878. “Elisha H. Allen Papers,” Library of Congress. (On microfilm, University of Hawaii Library, Honolulu.)

27 Parker was a Honolulu businessman and landowner. He was a poker-playing companion of Spreckels and King Kalakaua and was friendly to Spreckels throughout the latter's Hawaiian career.

28 Harris to Allen, Oct. 4, 1878.

29 Harris to Allen, undated, but probably written in July, 1878. “Allen Papers.”

30 “Journal of Legislative Assembly, 1880,” p. 264. Archives of Hawaii.

31 Pacific Commercial Advertiser, Aug. 7, 1880.

32 Ibid.

33 Ibid.

34 Hawaiian Gazette, Aug. 11, 1880.

35 Ibid.

36 “Journal of Legislative Assembly, 1880,” pp. 285–286.

37 Pacific Commercial Advertiser, Aug. 14, 1880.

38 Ibid.

39 Hawaiian Gazette, Aug. 18, 1880. The $30,000 advanced to the Commissioners of Crown Lands was eventually returned to the treasury in full. Pacific Commercial Advertiser, June 14, 1884.