1 - American Memory

31
There is no industry or individual in Hawaii who is completely
free from some kind of dependence with imported goods. Although we
have the good climate and land to produce some agricultural products,
we are dependent on the importation of fertilizers, chemicals' feed,
packing materials, and countless other items for our industry. A re-
cent report on the strike effects from the First Hawaiian Bank put
it best, "If a thing cannot be made out of lava, coral, air, water, or
semitropical plants, then the chances are good that Hawaii must import
it or its components."
In excliange for this tremendous volume of imported goods, our
economy must export. The major export industry in our county is the
growing and processing of sugar cane. This industry depends on
shipping lines to export its product to the west coast for refinement
and sale. In a normal year, about 1.2 million tons of raw sugar is ex-
ported to continental United States, of which a third is produced
on the county of Hawaii. In addition to sugar, our county produces
almost all of the State's 1.5 million pounds of macadamia nuts ex-
ported to mainland markets. Even our invisible exports, tourism, de-
pend on importation of goods for the consumption of our mainland
visitors. [Exhibit I shows the volume of goods imported and exported
through our island's two ports (see p. 34).]
This complete and total dependence on surface transportation by
our economy and well-being of our residents was clearly illustrated
during the 134-day west coast maritime dispute in 1971-72 and the
41-day ship ofticei-s dispute in late 1972. The County of Hawaii is
large in area but small in terms of population. Our 75,000 people earn
their livelihood by either being involved in one of our many small
businesses or as an employee of a large corporative venture such as
sugar companies or hotels. These small Dusinesses usually operate with
minimum capital and any fluctuation in the economy usually affects
their operations. Since we are basically a rural community, we also
have many family-operated farms. ^\lien a major shipping tieup hits
the islancfs, these smaller businesses, whose very survival depends on
the supplies from the mainland, suffer losses that may take years to
recoup or as experienced in the past strike, force some entrepreneurs
to close and file bankruptcy.
It is disheartening to see a person struggle for years to build a busi-
ness and have a maritime dispute cut off his lifeline and severely
damage his business. It is clear that any restriction of normal ship-
ping lines increases the cost of operating a business, the costs to con-
sumers and creates hardships for workers.
During the recent strikes, we have seen businessmen frustrated in
their attempts to obtain merchandise at both the retail and wholesale
level. There was a shortage of commodities which ranged from paper
products to cars. Construction firms and supply houses could not ob-
tain materials to start and complete both large and small projects.
Manufacturers could not get simple items such as seasonings and
packaging materials and some were forced to dump products when
export lines were shut off. The lack of feed, chemicals, and other sup-
plies played havoc with farm operations. Almost every business ex-
perienced higher costs.