Statewide County HI Archives Biographies.....Eckhart, Charles F. June 18, 1875 - ************************************************ Copyright. All rights reserved. http://www.usgwarchives.net/copyright.htm http://www.usgwarchives.net/hi/hifiles.htm ************************************************ File contributed for use in USGenWeb Archives by: J. Orr jessicanorr@gmail.com June 8, 2011, 2:55 pm Source: The Story of Hawaii and Its Builders. Published by the Honolulu Star Bulletin, Territory of Hawaii, 1925 Author: Edited by George F. Nellist CHARLES F. ECKHART, Plantation Consultant. To Charles F. Eckhart, agricultural technologist and plantation consultant, are credited two of the most important contributions yet made to the development of Hawaii’s foremost industries, the production of sugar and pineapples. He is the originator of the H-109 variety of sugar cane, the greatest producer ever known in Hawaii and now grown throughout the islands, and the inventor of the paper-mulching process in the cultivation of pineapples, sugar cane and other crops. The paper-mulching process, in particular, has gained world wide recognition and is now being introduced in the growing of tobacco, pineapples and other fruits and vegetables in North and South America, Africa, the West Indies and elsewhere. The process consists of laying paper, treated with asphaltum, on the ground in rows before planting, anchoring the paper to the soil and inserting the slip-plants, or other planting stock, into the ground through holes made in the paper for the purpose, the covering remaining in place during the growth of the plants. Use of the paper greatly reduces cultivation costs, by checking weed growth, and it adds to the fertility of the soil by warming it and by conserving its moisture. Through its agency the yield of many kinds of plants is thus greatly increased. During the year 1922, records kept by the Hawaiian Pineapple Co. showed that it obtained increases in fruit yield ranging from 25 to 55 percent on its paper-mulched fields as compared with results on land not so treated, and the saving in labor for weeding amounted to about 60 percent. The Olaa Sugar Co. has obtained, over a period of years, an average increase of approximately 18 percent in its plant cane yields and 13 percent in its ratoon yields, with a saving of from 30 to 40 percent of caretaking labor. Paper-mulch was used on approximately 12,500 acres of pineapple land in the Territory in 1923, and about 20,000 acres were under paper in 1924. Mr. Eckart has patented the process in the United States and other countries, and the treated paper manufactured for mulching is known as Thermo-Gen. in Florida and Georgia tobacco grown with Thermo-Gen has made gains of 25 to 71 percent in yield with shortened periods of maturity. Mr. Eckart was the first agriculturist in Hawaii to grow sugar cane from true seed, accomplishing this when director of the experiment station of the Hawaiian Sugar Planters’ Association. The original mother-plant of H-109 was one of many hundreds of seedlings germinated and propagated at the experiment station in 1905 under the direction of Mr. Eckart and subjected to his painstaking and rigid selection. Seedling work was then in its infancy and Director Eckart gave this important work his close personal attention, sending out to the plantations year after year the best canes developed at the experiment station, in order that they might be grown alongside of, and tested under plantation conditions in competition with, the then standard varieties. The late George F. Renton was the first of the plantation managers to recognize fully the superior cropping value of Mr. Eckart’s new cane, H-109, and it was through his faith and courage, and the example set by him, that the commercial spreading of this premier variety got its first big impetus. At the present time it is grown on a larger area than any other variety of cane in the islands, and on the irrigated plantations has virtually completely supplanted the former standard variety, known as Lahaina. It has surpassed all previous world’s records for cane and sugar yield per acre by a very wide margin. Mr. Eckart began his life work as an agricultural chemist and technologist when in college, where he was a pupil of Dr. E. W. Hilgard and Prof. E. J. Wickson. At the University of California, from which he received the degree of M.S., he specialized in this line, being granted his master’s degree upon a treatise on “Soils of the Hawaiian Islands.” He entered the employ of the Paauhau Sugar Plantation Co. in 1895 as mill chemist, and the following year went to the experiment station of the Hawaiian Sugar Planters’ Association as an assistant to Dr. Walter Maxwell. Mr. Eckart became director of agriculture and chemistry in 1901 and was appointed general director of the experiment station in 1909, continuing in the latter capacity until 1913. From 1913 to 1920, Mr. Eckart was manager of the Olaa Sugar Co., Ltd., and since 1920 has been the consulting director of that company and a general plantation consultant. He is a member of the Pacific, University and Oahu Country Clubs, the Association of Hawaiian Sugar Technologists, the Hawaiian Sugar Planters’ Association, a fellow of the American Geographical Society, a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and the Gamma Eta Kappa, Sigma Chi and Skull and Keys fraternities. Mr. Eckart was born in Marysville, Calif., June 18, 1875, the son of William Roberts and Harriet Louise (Gorham) Eckart. His early education was received in the public schools of San Francisco. In 1904 he married Edith Morgan Clay in Honolulu and they have three children, Charles Gorham, Robert Carlisle and Thomas Gordon Eckart. Additional Comments: Maggie - please disregard previous post for this person as the dob was incorrect. Should be June not May. Sorry. File at: http://files.usgwarchives.net/hi/statewide/bios/eckhart318bs.txt This file has been created by a form at http://www.poppet.org/hifiles/ File size: 6.1 Kb