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 Imust 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.
As regards the fear of leprosy itself, nowhere in the Settlement among lepers, or non-lepers, did I see any sign of it.The chief horror of leprosy obtains in the minds of those who have never seen a leper and who do not know anything about the disease.At the hotel at Waikiki a lady expressed shuddering amazement at my having the hardihood to pay a visit to the Settlement.On talking with her I learned that she had been born in Honolulu, had lived there all her life, and had never laid eyes on a leper.That was more than Icould say of myself in the United States, where the segregation of lepers is loosely enforced and where I have repeatedly seen lepers on the streets of large cities.
