PAN-PACIFIC CLUB WILL GET BEHIND HAWAIIAN UKULELE

Plans to Co-operate With Promotion Committee To Put Instrument Where It Belongs

MAINLAND DEALERS ARE TO BE SHOWN ITS MERIT

Quality and Output In Large Numbers Urged To Compete With Manufacturers In States

The Hawaiian ukulele in all its parts was one of the first exhibits of home manufacture to be sent to the Pan-Pacific industrial museum, and the Pan-Pacific Club is now co-operating with the promotion committee to put the Hawaiian ukulele where it belongs in the mainland. The promotion committee has received severe criticism from leading music houses in the mainland, setting forth the advantages of machine-made koa ukuleles manufactured in the mainland from Hawaiian wood, and insinuating that the hand made ukuleles of Hawaii might be greatly improved if up-to-date methods and machinery were used under the supervision of instrumental specialists from the mainland. They point out that as many thousands of ukuleles are sold every month now throughout America, and the little Hawaiian instrument has become recognized and a permanent place made for it, it might be well for the Hawaiian manufacturers to get together and pull together.

The big music dealers from the mainland write that it is the sentiment about the Hawaiian ukulele that gives it its big sale, and that if instruments are made in Hawaii equal in every way to those that are now scientifically manufactured in the mainland, everyone would prefer owning the Hawaiian made ukulele.

Small Exhibit On Hand

The small exhibit now in the Pan-Pacific industrial museum, over Castle & Cooke, showing the parts of the Hawaiian ukulele, and how it is sent out with the label that proves it to come from a Hawaiian factory, is to be greatly enlarged. The Hawaii Promotion Committee will secure samples of the different makes of the ukulele from the mainland factories, and it is hoped that either the modern machines with which they are made may be sent down as part of the exhibit, or at least large photographs of these, or even motion-picture films for the Pan-Pacific Club wishes to get a complete, instructive industrial exhibit that will interest everyone, especially the Hawaiian ukulele manufacturers in the actual making of this little instrument, that has done more to bring fame to Hawaii than have all other causes and advertising combined. While the promotion committee is collecting the exhibit from the mainland, the Pan-Pacific Club will be securing a complete exhibit from the Hawaiian manufacturers, and as entire room in the Pan-Pacific industrial museum will be given up to an exhibit of Hawaiian ukuleles in the making, as well as in the playing by the most expert men of the two races that have given this new musical instrument to the world—the Hawaiians and the Portuguese. By making this exhibit a part, perhaps of the official opening of the Pan-Pacific industrial museum, it is hoped to arouse an interest in the home manufacture of the ukulele that will lead to an entire re-organization of the methods that have hitherto done very well for a retail trade, but which are not evidently up to the standard and requirements of the great wholesale demand that has been made upon Hawaii for the ukulele.

Will Have One Rival

The ukulele will have only one rival as an opening feature of the Pan-Pacific industrial museum, and that will be the “Good Roads” exhibit, which it is hopped will show sections in model of all the methods that are being or may be utilized in road construction in Hawaii. The Pan-Pacific Club in its endeavor to foster home industries, has attempted to get the Hawaiian women to return to the manufacture of tapa, and having failed in this it is now considering an offer from the Japanese women of Hawaii to revive the tapa industry, which, by the way, would not be out of their line, as the mulberry paper of the Japanese is, after all, but a very thin tapa beaten from the same bark that has always been used by the Hawaiians. Just so soon as the complete Hawaiian ukulele exhibit can be installed, the formal opening of the Pan-Pacific museum will be announced, as many exhibits have already been put inn place.

(Pacific Commercial Advertiser, 8/5/1916, p. 13)