Hawaiian Sugar Planters' Association facts for kids
The Hawaiian Sugar Planters' Association (HSPA) was a group formed in 1895 by owners of sugarcane plantations in the Hawaiian Islands. This group worked together to help its members and make the sugar industry in Hawaii grow. They did scientific research and kept careful records about the sugar business.
The HSPA managed its workers in a special way. They sometimes started programs to help workers, but these programs often also helped the plantation owners make more money. To keep workers from teaming up, the HSPA sometimes used threats or tried to keep workers from different backgrounds separate.
The HSPA also worked hard to bring new workers to Hawaii. For example, they opened offices in places like Manila and Vigan, Ilocos Sur, in the Philippines. These offices helped find Filipino workers and offered them free trips to Hawaii. The HSPA became very powerful and even influenced laws in the U.S. Congress (in Washington, D.C.) that helped the sugar industry in Hawaii. On March 24, 1934, the U.S. Congress passed a law called the Tydings–McDuffie Act. This law changed how Filipinos living in the United States were seen and limited how many new workers could come from the Philippines each year to only 50.
Today, the HSPA is known as the Hawaii Agriculture Research Center (HARC). The old records from HSPA and HARC are kept at HARC's office.
One important thing HSPA did was collect and save all the old records from Hawaii's sugar companies. From 1983 to 1994, special record keepers (called archivists) gathered and organized these papers from many sugar companies. This collection of records, now called the HSPA Plantation Archives, was given to the University of Hawaii at Mānoa Library.
See also
- Hawaiian sugar strike of 1946
