Back in the day, when I worked for McBryde Sugar Co., I installed irrigation flumes and I drove haul cane trucks for a spell, but I was never a cut-seed man, which was considered, along with sabedong man (herbicide tank sprayer), the toughest job on the plantation.
Hawaiian sugar plantation cut-seed men, working in gangs in designated fields, used special cane knives to cut down stalks of cane about 6 inches from the ground.
They would then grab the stalks and chop them into pieces of seed cane approximately 16 inches long, before finally tossing the cuttings into a large bin behind them.
Their filled bins were then taken to a treatment plant where the seed cane was cured in heated water and then planted to start new sugarcane crops.
A good cut-seed man could fill a bin with 2,500 pounds of seed cane in 2½ hours and fill three bins in a hard day’s work. Bonuses were paid for extra productivity.
In 1939, the 10th annual Kaua‘i County Fair, held at the Lihu‘e Armory, then located where the State Building now stands, featured among its many attractions a cut-seed competition.
The best cut-seed men from Kaua‘i’s nine sugar plantations — Kilauea, Lihu‘e, Grove Farm, McBryde, Koloa, Makaweli, Gay &Robinson, Waimea, and Kekaha — competed to determine the best cut-seed man on Kaua‘i.
They were judged by how many pieces of accurately-cut seed cane they could make in 3 minutes from cane stalks brought to the armory.
A cash prize of $10 was awarded to the best and fastest cut-seed man.
The second-best man received $7.50, the third-best, $5, and the fourth, $2.50.
Angel Batin of the Koloa Sugar Co. won the title of the best and fastest cut-seed man on Kaua‘i for 1939, cutting 283 pieces of seed cane in three minutes.
In that contest, Buenaventura Borromeo, also of Koloa Sugar Co., came in second, Genaro Calina of Lihu‘e Plantation was third and Cornelio Magno of McBryde Sugar Co. finished fourth.
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Hank Soboleski has been a resident of Kauai since the 1960s. Hank’s love of the island and its history has inspired him, in conjunction with The Garden Island Newspaper, to share the island’s history weekly. The collection of these articles can be found here: https://bit.ly/2IfbxL9 and here https://bit.ly/2STw9gi Hank can be reached at hssgms@gmail.com
