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SPOTLIGHT LEADING MONTHLY CARIBBEAN NEWSMAGAZINE EVON BLAKE EDITOR & PUBLISHER ADDRESS 95 Harbour Street, Kingston, Jamaica, B.W.I. DISTRIBUTED IN The West Indies, Br. Honduras, Br. Guiana, Panama and The Canal Zone, Gt. Britain. Subscribers throughout the English-speaking world. FOREIGN REPRESENTATIVES (GR. BRITAIN) African & Colonial Press Agency, Ltd., 8, Red Lion Square, London, W.C. 1. (U.S.A.) M. D. Bromberg & Associates, Inc., 19-25 West 44th St., New York, N.Y. SUBSCRIPTION RATES Jamaica - 10/6 Br. Empire - 12/- U.S.A. & Canada - 15/- (By Air) Within Caribbean - 32/6 Outside Caribbean - 75/- ADVERTISING RATES (Unit rate p. 12 insertions) Full Page - £22 10 Half Page - £13 10 Third Page - £9 Quarter Page - £7 10 Sixth Page - £5 10 Twelfth Page - £3 10 IMPORTANT Ring 3160 or send a postcard to the Editor, 95 Harbour Street, Kingston - • If you change your address or • If your copy of SPOTLIGHT does not arrive. | VOL. 9. ● NO. 12 ● DECEMBER 1948 ● SHILLING THE GOVERNOR & THE FOOD TRADERS BY THE TIME THIS ISSUE is off press, the Governor's speech at Frome Agricultural Show in November will be old stuff. But food traders of Jamaica will never forget the attack he levelled at them in that speech. Apart from the fact that it was so un-Hugginsian in tone, its base was unsound. It showed up erstwhile level-headed Sir John as having fallen prey to bad advice and letting his emotion run away with his judgement. In fact, by the attack he has dropped into the sickly pattern of colonial governors to which Jamaica has long felt he does not belong. Colonial governors as a rule, think all merchants are crooks, piling up fortunes by fleecing the community. Like some of the socialist hotheads (of which Jamaica has quite a few), they do not think of the capital investment the merchant makes, the risk he takes, and the service he renders the community. They think of merchants not as citizens but as vampires. Merchants make a specialty of serving their community. The profits they make are the reward of such service. In normal trading times profits are unlimited. In abnormal times, such as the present, profits are limited by Government price ceilings. Since the war, Government has been bulk-buying essential goods and reselling to merchants on fixed quotas and at fixed prices. Government has no experience, training or capability for this buy-&-selling job. Consequently Government's trading losses have been staggering. Inefficient methods of storing and handling add to those losses. Government-bought flour has rotted on Kingston docks owing to bad or over-long storage. Government has increased the loss on flour by paying fabulous sums to recondition it. Flour is one item only. The general score on all other items is the same. But Government can always write off its losses, or recoup by saddling the community with increased taxes, or increased prices. Knowing how dearly the Jamaican people have been paying, and wishing to save millions of dollar (including fantastic commissions to a Canadian purchasing agency), merchants, through their Chamber of Commerce Food Committee, twice this year asked Government to return food purchasing to the trade, still keeping the clamp on prices so as to limit profit margins as at present and protect consumers from higher prices. Government should have welcomed the suggestion. But the Government of Jamaica has become addicted to saying no to the merchants, even when their representatives are so obviously in consumers' (and the country's interests. The Governor attacked the Chamber Food Committee for letting out information given it in confidence and for wishing to make more profits at public expense. The latter charge has been satisfactorily and publicly refuted. In respect of the former, we cannot agree that there should have been top-secrecy about the huge losses which we the people have to pay as a result of Government's rotten import policy. Why shouldn't we be told that because the Trade Controller doesn't know his job (it's not his line) the people's money is going down a drain in a heavy steady stream; that the time has come when an expensive, wasteful, inefficient department should be |
