A Silly Comparison
p. 10 · Read in the full issue
Between Queensland and Fiji- Indian Sugar Workers
IT is reported that an emissary of the Fiji-Indian cane-growers, who visited the Queensland sugar-towns and made an industrial investigation, has pro duced a pamphlet, in which a sharp com parison is made between the wages paid by the CSR Company to European cane growers in Australia, and by the same Co. to Indian cane-growers in Fiji.
There is a wide difference, of course; and the data is being used to foment restlessness and discontent among the Indian cane-growers.
This is a good example of the stupidity of the average agitator and amateur eco nomist. It is impossible to make any helpful comparison between sugar producing conditions in Australia and Fiji.
THE Queensland canefields produce sugar only for the Australian market.
Partly by import duty, partly by sub sidy, the Australian market is reserved for the Queensland industry. Australia pays more than world parity for her sugar, because the Australian workers in the Australian sugar industry get much higher wages than the workers in the innumerable other tropical and sub tropical countries who produce sugar for the world market. Australian sugar could not be sold profitably in the world market —its production is much too costly.
In Fiji, there is no domestic market worth mentioning—if the Fiji industry is to survive, the sugar produced in Fiji must be produced cheaply enough to be sold at a profit in the world’s markets. That in turn means that the standard of wages in the Fiji sugar industry must re main much below the Australian standard.
Anyone who has travelled in Fiji will agree that the standards of living in the Indian sugar-towns could be raised, with advantage to everyone. But those stan dards are not controlled by the CSR Company (which makes only a modest profit out of its Fiji enterprises), or by the British Government of Fiji. They are controlled by the industrial conditions ruling in the various tropical and sub tropical countries which produce the sugar that is sold under competition in the world markets. Any improvement in those conditions would be immediately re flected in the Fiji-Indians’ standards of life.
If the Fiji-Indian agitators would cease their attacks upon the CSR Co. and the British administration, and co-operate with those who are trying to get agree ment concerning sugar-workers’ condi tions between all countries which export sugar, some real good might be achieved.