Imagine you couldn’t vote for Governor. Until statehood, the U.S. President appointed all Hawaii’s governors. Although the President got input from prominent citizens, most folks had NO say.
Many founding Elks were active Republican Party leaders, but Democratic presidents appointed three Elks as Governor. President Woodrow Wilson appointed Lucius Eugene Pinkham (1913-1918) and Charles James McCarthy (1918-1921). President Franklin D. Roosevelt appointed Joseph Boyd Poindexter (1934-1942).
L. E. Pinkham was initiated at Lodge 616, September 1904. Born in Massachusetts, Pinkham came to Hawaii in 1891, left in 1894, and returned in 1898. He ended his business career in 1903 and was appointed to the Board of Health. Pinkham served during island Bubonic Plague and Cholera epidemics. He championed the Waikiki Reclamation Project (Ala Wai Canal) to control mosquitoes and make farm fields into expensive real estate. He died in 1922 in California.
January 1, 1914, Gov. Pinkham took office with a very short ceremony, congratulations, and acceptance of a rose and fern lei. His office was draped in leis of maile and ilima, as were portraits of King Kamehameha and Princess Kaiulani. At a public reception, 616 member Henry Berger led the Band in a musical program. The Hawaii National Democratic League’s Jan. 2 dinner was ‘dry’. “McCarn cocktails” (ice water) accompanied the toasts. U.S. District Attorney Jeff McCarn wanted Democrats to back prohibition, despite their nickname as “The Bourbons.”
In contrast, BPOE 616 threw a big, ‘wet’ party at the Lodge on King Street. Elks recorded the January 22, 1914 reception for Governor and Mrs. Pinkham as “an unqualified success.” The Lodge was decorated with potted palms and ferns, colorful ribbons, plenty of antlers, a taxidermied elk, and a “huge picture of ‘Uncle Pink’ as the governor was known in Elkdom.” A ‘wet’ 11 o’clock toast was followed by continued dancing. Donations kept event costs low. As an economy, Augustus Edward Murphy (first Leading Knight, ER 1912-13) “took charge of soliciting cakes from wives and daughters of members.” Brother Heydenreich of the Young Café sent plates, forks, punchbowls, and trays, along with “six efficient waiters” at no cost.
Most biographies stress Pinkham’s work toward the Ala Wai Canal, building a civic center, and modernizing the National Guard, but the Governor’s job was far tougher.
It hurt Pinkham politically when, late in 1914, the prohibition favoring U.S. District Attorney McCarn was charged with assault (brawling, brandishing a revolver against a fellow attorney while IN the court house). Tried twice, and acquitted, he resigned in 1915.
World War I depressed Hawaii’s economy, dropping general revenue 50%. Pinkham cut the College of Hawaii’s budget 25%. The 1917 U.S. entry into the war brought an anti-German frenzy: property seizures, arrests, internment camps, and threats of a German language ban. Profiteering, shortages, and hoarding of goods and food followed. The military wanted prohibition and help catching draft dodgers. A cattle anthrax outbreak was labeled a “deliberate German plot to deplete our meat supply,” while Hawaii and the world fought an influenza epidemic (20+million dead worldwide; 675,000 in U.S.). Any one would be exhausted.
Pinkham had a rough relationship with the press. Editors held him responsible for the Territory’s distress. Hearing Pinkham would be replaced, Hawaii Shinpo wrote that Pinkham had done “what little he could to stir up trouble where none existed” between allies Japan and U.S.A., and was “notorious for his anti-Japanese tendencies.”
Advertiser editors called Pinkham unpatriotic when he gave a speech that wasn’t stirring enough for “red-blooded Americans” opposed to “Prussianism and the murderers of women and children.” Their last Pinkham editorial labeled him “a complete misfit” who “never once made himself plain to the community ...and rarely used a sentence that was understandable.”
Pinkham resigned his BPOE 616 membership in April 1918. Why? Elks were the focus of a very public and bitter prohibition fight during World War I fueled interest in ‘dry’ patriotism. With 616 attacked, perhaps membership was a liability to a man who drank ‘McCarn cocktails’. Perhaps Pinkham was generally unhappy after being “given the federal hook” as the Advertiser labeled his failure to be reappointed Governor. Or Perhaps he hated being called Uncle Pink!
Anita Manning, Lodge Historian
References:
Honolulu Advertiser Jan 1 & 23 1914, Dec 22 1915; Jan 8, Jul 3 1917, Jun 22, 1818; Sept 1, 1973
Men of Hawaii, 1917, Honolulu Star-Bulletin Printing.
Membership records BPOE 616
Minutes, BPOE 616, July 25, Aug 1, Dec 19 1913; Jan 16, 23 1914; Apr 26 1918
Star-Bulletin Jan 3 & 23, Oct 9 1914
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