Their fish they sell to the Board of Health, and
the money they receive is their own. While I was there, one night's
catch was four thousand pounds.
And as these men fish, others farm. All trades are followed. One
leper, a pure Hawaiian, is the boss painter. He employs eight men,
and takes contracts for painting buildings from the Board of Health.
He is a member of the Kalaupapa Rifle Club, where I met him, and I
must confess that he was far better dressed than I. Another man,
similarly situated, is the boss carpenter. Then, in addition to the
Board of Health store, there are little privately owned stores,
where those with shopkeeper's souls may exercise their peculiar
instincts. The Assistant Superintendent, Mr. Waiamau, a finely
educated and able man, is a pure Hawaiian and a leper. Mr.
Bartlett, who is the present storekeeper, is an American who was in
business in Honolulu before he was struck down by the disease. All
that these men earn is that much in their own pockets. If they do
not work, they are taken care of anyway by the territory, given
food, shelter, clothes, and medical attendance. The Board of Health
carries on agriculture, stock-raising, and dairying, for local use,
and employment at fair wages is furnished to all that wish to work.
They are not compelled to work, however, for they are the wards of
the territory. For the young, and the very old, and the helpless
there are homes and hospitals.
Major Lee, an American and long a marine engineer for the Inter
Island Steamship Company, I met actively at work in the new steam
laundry, where he was busy installing the machinery. I met him
often, afterwards, and one day he said to me:
"Give us a good breeze about how we live here. For heaven's sake
write us up straight. Put your foot down on this chamber-of-horrors
rot and all the rest of it. We don't like being misrepresented.
We've got some feelings. Just tell the world how we really are in
here."
Man after man that I met in the Settlement, and woman after woman,
in one way or another expressed the same sentiment. It was patent
that they resented bitterly the sensational and untruthful way in
which they have been exploited in the past.
In spite of the fact that they are afflicted by disease, the lepers
form a happy colony, divided into two villages and numerous country
and seaside homes, of nearly a thousand souls. They have six
churches, a Young Men's Christian Association building, several
assembly halls, a band stand, a race-track, baseball grounds,
shooting ranges, an athletic club, numerous glee clubs, and two
brass bands.
"They are so contented down there," Mr. Pinkham told me, "that you
can't drive them away with a shot-gun."
This I later verified for myself. In January of this year, eleven
of the lepers, on whom the disease, after having committed certain
ravages, showed no further signs of activity, were brought back to
Honolulu for re-examination. They were loath to come; and, on being
asked whether or not they wanted to go free if found clean of
leprosy, one and all answered, "Back to Molokai."
In the old days, before the discovery of the leprosy bacillus, a
small number of men and women, suffering from various and wholly
different diseases, were adjudged lepers and sent to Molokai. Years
afterward they suffered great consternation when the bacteriologists
declared that they were not afflicted with leprosy and never had
been. They fought against being sent away from Molokai, and in one
way or another, as helpers and nurses, they got jobs from the Board
of Health and remained. The present jailer is one of these men.
Declared to be a non-leper, he accepted, on salary, the charge of
the jail, in order to escape being sent away.
At the present moment, in Honolulu, there is a bootblack. He is an
American negro. Mr. McVeigh told me about him. Long ago, before
the bacteriological tests, he was sent to Molokai as a leper. As a
ward of the state he developed a superlative degree of independence
and fomented much petty mischief. And then, one day, after having
been for years a perennial source of minor annoyances, the
bacteriological test was applied, and he was declared a non-leper.
"Ah, ha!" chortled Mr. McVeigh. "Now I've got you! Out you go on
the next steamer and good riddance!"
But the negro didn't want to go. Immediately he married an old
woman, in the last stages of leprosy, and began petitioning the
Board of Health for permission to remain and nurse his sick wife.
There was no one, he said pathetically, who could take care of his
poor wife as well as he could. But they saw through his game, and
he was deported on the steamer and given the freedom of the world.
But he preferred Molokai. Landing on the leeward side of Molokai,
he sneaked down the pali one night and took up his abode in the
Settlement. He was apprehended, tried and convicted of trespass,
sentenced to pay a small fine, and again deported on the steamer
with the warning that if he trespassed again, he would be fined one
hundred dollars and be sent to prison in Honolulu. And now, when
Mr. McVeigh comes up to Honolulu, the bootblack shines his shoes for
him and says:
"Say, Boss, I lost a good home down there. Yes, sir, I lost a good
home." Then his voice sinks to a confidential whisper as he says,
"Say, Boss, can't I go back? Can't you fix it for me so as I can go
back?"
He had lived nine years on Molokai, and he had had a better time
there than he has ever had, before and after, on the outside.
