Can Such Things Be?

As boss of Hawaii's biggest pineapple business, Henry A. White was surprised to learn that most of the Hawaiian Pineapple Co.'s 1,000 plantation workers on Lanai Island had never seen the company's cannery on Oahu, some 50 miles away. Checking up, White also learned that most of the cannery's 1,300 full-time workers had never seen the plantation.

Last week, White sent both groups touring, at a cost of more than $50,000 to the company. He rented a fleet of Hawaiian Airlines' DC-35 and started shuttling the cannery workers to Lanai, the plantation workers to Oahu. Both had a day's inspection trip, plus banquets, entertainment and pay. Plantation Worker Luis Espina, who had not been off Lanai Island in 17 years, gasped when he saw row on row of the cannery's machines core and peel 100 fresh pineapples a minute. Said he: "I never knew such things existed."

When everybody in the company knows what everybody else does, President White thinks his employees will have a better idea of their importance. Lorenzo Faba, a Filipino wheel tractor operator, thought so, too. When he got back from the cannery, he observed in his Sunday-best English: "We should wish with hopes that we must continue to cooperate with confidence to each other to make our company successful and so with our livelihood."

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