The Hawaiian Star rolled out the red carpet for 47 visiting members of the Southern California Editorial Association who arrived aboard the steamship Alameda on September 7, 1906. The newspaper editors and their families were greeted with leis of carnations and maile, whisked away in special Rapid Transit cars to the Alexander Young Hotel and Royal Hawaiian, and treated to a VIP tour that included meeting Governor Carter at the old Palace building. The visitors seemed delighted by everything—even the tropical rainstorm that greeted them, with C.F. Holland of the Los Angeles Evening Express declaring 'It looks fine to a man from Los Angeles. We don't get much rain down there and are happy when we see it.' Meanwhile, the wrecked steamship Manchuria lay visible on the beach, providing dramatic backdrop and capturing the editors' professional interest in the salvage story unfolding before their eyes.

This editorial junket reflects Hawaii's aggressive push for mainland tourism and investment in 1906, just eight years after annexation. The Territory was working hard to reshape its image from remote Pacific outpost to tropical paradise accessible to wealthy Californians. These weren't just any visitors—they controlled important newspapers that could influence public opinion about Hawaii back home. The timing was crucial: Hawaii needed to attract American settlers, tourists, and capital to build its post-plantation economy, and California's booming population made it the perfect target market.

• The visitors published not one but two competing newspapers aboard the Alameda called 'The Tattler and the Harpoon,' described as 'full of healthy editorial roasts' where 'writers wrote about one another without stint'
• A safe deposit box at Hawaiian Trust Co. cost just $5 per year (50 cents a month) to protect your irreplaceable papers from fire or theft
• Governor Carter entertained the editors with stories about Hawaii's 'many revolutions, but they have been singularly bloodless' and joked about the Capitol building having 'plenty of graft in its construction,' making it 'thoroughly American and up-to-date'
• Rev. Browne was appointed 'Sporting Editor' of the shipboard newspaper and had to be cautioned not to sketch the governor, being told to 'remember his place'

• The Manchuria wreck mentioned as an 'object of interest' was a massive Pacific Mail steamship that ran aground near Honolulu—such wrecks were becoming common as shipping traffic exploded in the early 1900s Pacific trade boom
• Those Sorosis women's shoes advertised for $3.50-$5.00 would cost about $130-$185 today, making them luxury footwear—Sorosis was actually America's first women's professional club, founded in 1868
• The telegraphed news briefs mention terrorists burning 177 houses in Poland and a maniac killing seven with an axe in Warsaw—this was during the brutal 1905-1907 Russian Revolution that would set the stage for the Bolshevik takeover a decade later
• Governor Carter's joke about Hawaii's Capitol having construction graft wasn't far off—territorial politics were notoriously corrupt, and the building did indeed require expensive foundation repairs shortly after completion