The Tragedy of the Fixed-Income

Man in the Tropical Islands

FIJI’S merchants have been de manding—with much reason— that their £ shall be taken to parity with British and New Zealand cur rencies. Australia’s bemused Socialist economists, while keeping the - Aus tralian £ devalued, for the sake of the pampered Australian trade union ist, allows the tide of rising over seas costs to find its own level in Australia’s Pacific Territories. There are currency adjustments going on in nearly every country in the Pacific.

How many of these Red rulers and rich merchants who are pushing the £ around, for their own purposes, have given a thought to the men who are uncomplainingly taking a bitter economic hiding—the men who are expected to maintain a decent status on a fixed income—the responsible officials in the various administra tions, and the high executives or pro fessional men in the big trading con cerns?

These are the men who keep, run ning smoothly in every Pacific Terri tory, the wheels of government, of trade and commerce, of banking and transportation. In proportion to population and trade turn-over, there are more of these men, and their welfare is of relatively greater im portance, than similar men in coun tries like Australia or Britain.

TN 1939-40, before the Pacific War, the salaries of officials and execu

fives in the Territories were calculated to give them freedom from financial worry, and means to (a) maintain a proper standard of living in their tropical homes, (b) provide funds for their periods of furlough, (c) send their children away to temperate countries for education and (d) make adequate provision for sickness, accident and old age. No man can give efficient service if he is worried by conditions, beyond his control, which affect the welfare of himself and his family. If these men have private worries, conditions in the Territories generally must suffer.

Since 1939-40, the costs of living in the Territories have moved upwards so rapidly that they have completely out-paced all the attempts of govern ments, companies and private firms to keep pace with them. To-day, in all the Territories, without exception, important executives on salaries re garded ten years ago as adequate and suitable, are harassed and desperately anxious—and their condition is get ting worse.

Our private information indicates that this is a more serious problem than is realised even by Governors, and Administrators, and Managing Directors, in seemingly close touch with the situation. Few men—and not men of the status of trusted executives—like to go “crying poor mouth” to their chiefs. Yet, to-day,

such men are reducing their personal servants, throwing unsuitable duties upon their wives, cancelling or short ening their leave, reducing their per sonal expenditure on clothes and equipment, seeking desperate alterna tives to cold-country schools for their children—all because their salaries will no longer take care of the ever mounting costs of food, house equip ment, domestic service, transporta tion and education.

Goyernors and Administrators are handicapped, too, because they must pass on their recommendations for higher salaries to Ministers in Lon don, Canberra and Wellington and Paris, who are usually ignorant or intolerant of Islands conditions.

Similarly, commercial and profes sional salaries in the Islands are more often than not controlled by a Board of Directors in non-tropical countries who do not appreciate the vital importance of seeing that their executives in the tropics maintain their proper standards of living and their correct social status.

If those standards break, we might as well give away our important in terests in the South Pacific Islands.

DIRECTORATES and Governments responsible for maintaining executives in the tropical Islands have generally failed seriously in the past two or three years in recognising their obligation to take care of the men who are doing the job for them.

This is no idle statement. There is a great deal of distress among im portant men on fixed salaries to-day in all Islands Territories, without ex ception; and it is getting worse.

There has been no deliberate re fusal by Governments or Companies to see their responsibilities. It is just that the men who howl the loudest, in this time of great economic crisis and change and turmoil, are the men who receive attention first; and the men who carry the burden of execu tive control, the educated and trained men with a sense of obligation and loyalty, are the last men to howl.

The tragedy exists in every Pacific Territory to-day. It is getting worse.

It demands the urgent attention of the top men in London and Paris, Canberra and Wellington. Let us re peat that, if there is one class of men, above all others, who should be freed from private worry, it is the execu tive, no matter how modest his rank, who is loyally doing his job in the Islands. He is the bulwark of the system which the Red wreckers are so eager to destroy.