Maynard Hedstrom

Part-Retirement Of Sir Maynard Hedstrom

From Our Own Correspondent SUVA, April 21 SIR MAYNARD HEDSTROM, dignified, benign, and with a dry sense of hum our that crops up unexpectedly, has relinquished the managing directorshin of the wealthy and influential commercial enterprise of Morris, Hedstrom, Ltd. But, as chairman of the board of directors, he has moved to a new room in the firm’s Suva headquarters and will still be the power behind the throne.

The new occupant of the throne is Mr.

H. E. Snell, “whose ability and faculty for organisation,” said Sir Maynard in a speech at a large staff gathering to com memorate the occasion of his partial re tirement, “have contributed very largely to the sound position of the company to-day.”

Strongly entrenched in Fiji. Samoa and Tonga, and with commercial links and associations snreading far overseas, the business now known as Morris, Hedstrom, Ltd. was started about 55 years ago when voune Maynard Hedstrom, sub-agent at Levuka for the Union Steam Shin Co. of New Zealand, decided that he had not enoueh to do and obtained permission to set up as a Customs agent.

In those days, it is interesting to learn youne Hedstrom, who was born at Levuka in 1872. with solid Swedish forbears, earned a salary of £l5O a year. To-day his income. . . . Well, when the Suva Chamber of Commerce, of which he is president, was agitated about Fiji’s in come tax bump-un some months after the end of the war. Sir Mavnard sighed natiently, “At mv time of life,” he said,

“I am much more concerned with the subject of death duties.”

“To obtain capital,” he told his 1947 head office staff, “I borrowed £2O from the father of a girl I used to take home from church. In view of this relation ship, the lender generously charged me only 10 per cent, per anum interest.”

Starting thus modestly, the business expanded through a series of partnerships and a series of absorptions of other con cerns. From Brown and Joske and Hed strom it changed to Morris and Hed strom in 1902. Then, when Arthur Joske Ltd. was bought out, the title finally became Morris, Hedstrom, Ltd. More firms were absorbed —G. W. Miller and Co., Lau; Hugh Ragg and Co., Ba; Henry Marks and Co., Suva; John Robertson and Co., Sigatoka; and, by 1910, the company’s headquarters were established in Suva. A station at Rotuma had been acquired with one of the early-purchased firms; later Tindall and Ross, Tonga, and Smyth and Carruthers, Apia, were added to the list of acquisitions.

In 1921, a power in the Crown Colony of Fiji (he has served on both the Ex ecutive and Legislative Councils) Mr.

Hedstrom became Sir Maynard Hedstrom.

His was the first kniehthood conferred on a man born in the South Pacific islands.

Three presentations were made to Sir Maynard at the recent staff gathering.

The staff’s gift was a complete and beau tifully-fashioned desk set in tortoiseshell (Suva made). From the Standard- Vacuum Oil Co. of New York (one of the oldest and most important of the links in the chain of agencies held by Morris, Hedstrom, Ltd.) came a glittering illuminated address in book form and executed in the true style of the beauti ful English manuscripts of the Middle Ages; and the Vacuum Oil Co. Pty. Ltd. of Australia sent a solid gold cigarette case.