Search

One of the most significant bills on the agenda of the 81st U.S. Congress was H. R. 49. As introduced by Hawaii's Delegate Joseph R. Farrington, this bill had as its objective the admission of the Hawaiian Islands into the American Union as a state on an equal footing with the original states. It maybe recalled that the bill, as passed by the House, was referred to the Senate Committee on Interior and Insular Affairs. After several months of deliberation, nine of the thirteen members of the Committee made public a 5000-word report. This majority report gives unequivocal testimony that the people of Hawaii are ready for statehood and recommends that the Senate approve the bill as amended by the Committee. At the same time, Senator Hugh Butler issued a one-man report in which he expressed his fear that the granting of statehood to Hawaii would create a grave danger to the national security. The other three members voiced no opinion. Like all the U.S. states, Hawaii has characteristic features of its own. These features are the natural results of a pattern of cultural and racial fusion which has been in operation in the U.S. since Colonial days. Its characteristic features may appear rather exotic, but to take them as symbolic of the predominance of alien traditions is to underrate the power of assimilation of U.S. democracy.

The article focuses on changing standard of living due to acculturation. It is evident that the standard and the content of living common to a group of people can be ascertained best through the observation of the concrete behavior of people in a community. Through informal conversation, specific aspirations and social motivations of people can be determined, through careful analysis of their consumption patterns, in terms, not only of the incomes, but also of the wider context of social institutions, an explicit manifestation of a people's standard can be shown; and finally, though a detailed study of life-histories of individuals in the community, a set of factors and forces that brings about an orderly change in the standard of living can be measured. In this article the author studies one hundred families on a Hawaiian sugar plantation, the effort was made to measure their standards and scales of living and to show how they interact to produce and maintain a new scheme of living.