In the mid-1800s, residents of East Maui actively explored opportunities for commercial agriculture. Letters to newspapers in the 1850s urged the construction of ship landings and roadways to transport produce, or described recommended crops for the region. In 1856, the Hana Farmers Association (Ahahui Mahiai o Hana) was established and included members from Kaupo. The bylaws recommended crops such as taro, sweet potato, bananas, corn, beans, oranges and coffee.
A few years later, in 1861, Kaupo settled on its first large-scale commercial crop. But it was not one of the recommended crops above. The plant was cotton.
Imported cotton had been grown in Hawaii for decades prior to the 1860s. A copper plate engraving from 1840 made at Lahainaluna school featured a cotton plant next to two banana trees.
But in 1861, the catalyst for cotton growing was a far-off event: the U.S. Civil War. By the summer of 1861, the North had effectively blockaded all Southern ports, severely restricting the South’s ability to export its high-quality “Sea Island” cotton. Prices soared.
Farmers throughout Hawaii took note of the economic potential, and on Sept. 13, 1861, the Cotton Farmers Association of Kaupo held its inaugural meeting, with 23 initial members.
The minutes of that meeting were published later that month in Ka Hoku o ka Pakipika and included the following:
Hai mai o Manu i kona manao, pono i kela kanaka keia kanaka, e manao ana e hoao e mahi pulupulu, e hookupu mai i hapawalu kala pakahi, i mea e kuai ai i ka anoano a a loaa mai ka anoano pulupulu alaila e mahele iwaena o kanaka.
Ku mai o H. Manase a hoike mai i kona manao, pono i keia komite ke hoike i ke kumukuai o ka paua pulupulu, a me ka lilo koke o ka pulupulu ke kanu ia, o poho auanei na kanaka.
Ku mai o T. C. Wilmington a wehewehe mai i ke ano o ke kanu ana ma Amerika, hai mai oia, he waiwai nui ka pulupulu i na manawa a pau. Aole manawa lilo ole o ka pulupulu ke mahiia maanei, no ka mea, aole like ka pulupulu me ke kalo, uala, a pela aku, ua lawe ia ka pulupulu i ka aina e, e like me ke ko, aole emi ke kumu kuai o ke ko, he waiwai nui ka pulupulu a me ke ko i na manawa a pau.
[Manu spoke his opinion that everyone interested in trying cotton farming should each pay an eighth-dollar to purchase cotton seeds and, when they are acquired, to distribute them among the participants.
H. Manase stood and presented his opinion that this committee should report on the prices of cotton and the initial expenses of planting lest people be ruined.
T. C. Wilmington stood and explained the method of planting in America. He said that cotton is always valuable. It will never unprofitable to cultivate here, because unlike taro, sweet potato, and so forth, cotton is exported to other lands. It is like sugar cane. The price of sugar cane never drops. Cotton and sugar cane are always highly valuable.]
The members passed the resolution to each pay an eighth-dollar to purchase seeds, with the funds due by January 1862. By this time, a number of stores in Honolulu were offering seeds for sale.
A year later, in January 1863, there came an offer of a donation of seeds in Ka Nupepa Kuokoa:
Ua loaa mai ia’u ma ka la hope o Dekemaba iho nei, elua barela anoano pulupulu Aigupika, elua dala ke kuai pohoia mai no ka mea hookahi, a e hooili ana wau na ka ahahui mahi pulupulu ma Kaupo, ia Helekunihi, i ka Luna Hoomalu o ia ahahui i ka lua o ka barela, i mea haawi wale aku i ka poe hui kanu pulupulu. Aole no e haawi i ka mea i loaa ole ka eka, a mau eka paha. Aole no nae au e hooili wale ana ke loaa ole mai ka palapala a ka Luna Hoomalu, a me ke Kakauolelo oia aha paha.
[On the last day of December, I bought two barrels of Egyptian cotton seeds for the dear price of $2 each. I will donate the second barrel to the cotton-farming association at Kaupo through Helekunihi, its chairman, to give to members. However, these seeds should not be given to those who do not have an acre or more. Moreover, the seeds will not be provided without a written request from the chairman or secretary.]
The donor of these seeds was John Papa ʻĪʻī. Today he is best known for his government service and historical writings published as the book Fragments of Hawaiian History. But in the 1860s, he was a vocal supporter of the cotton industry. In an article Ka Nupepa Kuokoa in March 1862, ʻĪʻī provided an extensive list of areas throughout the islands suitable for growing cotton. He also tried his hand at cotton farming himself and was quite successful, according to a news brief in Ka Nupepa Kuokoa in August 1863:
Ua ike iho makou i ka mala pulupulu ma Mililani, a Ka Mea Hanohano Ioane Ii; a ua mahalo makou i ka maikai o ka ulu ana.
[We have seen the Honorable John Ii’s cotton field at Mililani, and we are in admiration at how well it is growing.]
This donation by ʻĪʻī was likely not purely altruistic and may have been connected to efforts by Henry Whitney, editor of Ka Nupepa Kuokoa, to distribute cotton seeds throughout Hawaii under a contractual arrangement. Whitney provided the following description of his arrangement:
“Seeing an opportunity for engaging in what promised to become a profitable business, I sent to Washington and also to New York, and procured at considerable expense several bags of genuine long-staple cotton seed, guaranteed to be from the best Georgia and South Carolina Sea islands. This seed was distributed without charge as called for by natives and foreigners living throughout the group, under a written contract with me to purchase at four cents per pound all the pure cotton in the seed that they would deliver in good condition in Honolulu.”
These terms were lucrative for Whitney. At the peak of Hawaii’s cotton period in the mid-1860s, Whitney earned $2.25 per pound for cotton shipped to New York. This was quite a premium over the $0.04 per pound paid to farmers for the raw cotton, though there were also costs to process the cotton before shipment.
For farmers who were willing to take payment in the form of issues of Ka Nupepa Kuokoa, Whitney offered a more generous $0.20 per pound, or a year's subscription (a $2 value) for 10 pounds of cotton.
As far as quality, the cotton grown in Hawaii was exceptional. A common measure of cotton quality is based on the length of the fiber (called the staple). A staple length of about 1.5 inches would fall into the highest ranking of extra long staple. Hawaii’s cotton easily passed this quality benchmark, as reported in the Pacific Commercial Advertiser:
"The quality of the Hawaiian cotton was judged by experts to be superior to any in the Southern States, in fineness, length and strength. That shipped by Mr. Whitney was consumed chiefly by the manufacturers of sewing thread in Massachusetts and Connecticut, as it made the finest and strongest spool thread in the market. In length the staple of our best sea island cotton, grown from a plant less than a year old, measured from two to three inches."
But Kaupo easily bested even this high bar set by Hawaii cotton in general. Another article in the Pacific Commercial Advertiser reported staple lengths for Kaupo cotton being double the already impressive Hawaii average:
"[Whitney] had twelve or fifteen Sea-Island cotton gins at work preparing cotton grown on the four principal islands. … The best of this cotton, having a staple five inches long, and being wonderfully silky and fine, was grown in Kaupo, Maui, and Kona, Hawaii."
While Kaupo’s cotton farmers were reaping the rewards of the Civil War blockade, they were also aware of those who were hurt by the effects. In April of 1863, H. Manase, pastor of Huialoha Church and a member of the Cotton Farmers Association of Kaupo, organized a church donation of $3.75 (about $90 in today’s money) to assist workers in England affected by the Lancashire Cotton Famine. This crisis involved a collapse in England’s fabric industry as a result of the blockade in the southern United States limiting cotton shipments to England.
The end of the U. S. Civil War marked the decline in Hawaii’s cotton industry. The global price of cotton plummeted, to $0.15 per pound from the high of over $2 per pound just a few years earlier. With the higher transportation costs of shipping cotton from Hawaii to the East Coast, it simply became unprofitable.
But Whitney also attributed the downfall of Hawaiian cotton to poor crop management. Instead of continuously planting new cotton plants, farmers cut back and regrew the existing plants (called a "rattoon crop"), which reduced fiber quality.
In February 1894, thirty years after the heyday of cotton, Whitney reflected on the decline in the Planter’s Monthly magazine, also sounding a hopeful note for the future of cotton in the islands:
"When the plants are cut down and a rattoon crop produced, the staple becomes weaker each crop, till finally it is worthless. The cotton growers found it so easy to raise a rattoon crop by cutting off the old trees and allowing the new growth to spring up from the roots, and starting new plants where the old were dead, that many of them resorted to this trick, which ultimately destroyed the cotton business, as it became extremely difficult to keep the good from the poor, and the price obtained was always based on the poorest samples found in the shipment. It was this deterioration in the quality, that led to the abandonment of the business, as it entailed a heavy loss on the last few shipments. Had it not been for this deterioration in the quality of our long-staple cotton, the production of it might have continued to this day. A cotton plantation conducted by skillful grower, and renewed every two or three years, by fresh planting and from the best imported seed, will probably pay, and we should like to see such an enterprise started."
