Up Front

with the Editor

THE Sydney Morning Herald re ported: “The Colonial Sugar Refining Company has entered upon an undertaking of great magnitude, for the purpose of developing the sugar-growing resources of the Fiji Islands. Their scene of operations is on the Rewa River, about 12 miles from the ocean, where a considerable area has been planted with young cane in the last few months. Before long there will be a small colony of Europeans and natives in the em ploy of the company. The steamer Fiona leaves Sydney immediately with 20 mechanics and about 60 labourers to commence the work of erecting a large sugar mill on the banks of the Rewa.”

I was in Fiji the other day and saw, again, that now-rusted shell of the sugar mill on the banks of the Rewa, at Nausori—built in 1882, and closed in 1959 because its output could not compete with the better yields of the CSR's four other Fiji mills built or acquired later.

And now, this month the last page turns on the whole volume of CSR’s history in Fiji. On April 1 the “under taking of such magnitude” which be gan with the Nausori mill, is handed over to the Fiji Government and 90 years of CSR in Fiji ends. The new Fiji Sugar Corporation takes over the assets of South Pacific Sugar Mills, which is CSR’s operating subsidiary in the South Pacific dominion.

It’s been a painless changeover.

CSR itself decided to withdraw and sell; CSR men still in Fiji will phase themselves out; CSR will continue to lend a hand at marketing. But it’s not CSR’s show now, and nobody with any sense of history can fail to mourn the end of an era. The sugar industry made Fiji.

An American, David Whippy, be fore the arrival of the CSR, estab lished the first mill in Fiji. That was in 1862 on Wakaya Island. Other mills followed in various parts of Fiji and the growing of cane became more widespread.

But in 1884 there came a world sugar slump (and not the last of them), which wiped out most of the Fiji mills. The CSR’s Nausori was one of the few that survived, and the CSR added the Rarawai mill in 1886, Labasa in 1894 and Lautoka in 1903.

Penang, the fifth mill, was not bought until 1926, having been one of those established before the company had come to Fiji. From 1926 the CSR became the only miller in Fiji.

Half of Fiji’s citizens today have an Indian background, mostly as descendants of labourers brought to the Fiji canefields under an indenture system which began in 1879 and was abolished in 1916.

Many people assume it was the CSR which brought in the Indians, but as the dates show, the indentured system was already in operation be fore the CSR went to Fiji. The system was introduced by Sir Arthur Gordon, Fiji’s Governor of the time, and had been in operation for many years before that in other British colonies.

The labourers were indentured to the Fiji Government. They bound themselves to work where directed for five years for wages and accommo dation. Each man could work for another five years for anybody he pleased and was then entitled to free passage for his wife and family.

About 62,000 Indians were brought to Fiji under the system and only about a third asked for repatriation.

It was the CSR which “freed” the labourers and set the pattern of in dividual farming which has become the backbone of the Fiji agricultural economy.

CSR once owned or leased the land and produced the cane for its mills with the aid of this hired labour.

Then it began leasing its estates to independent farmers, particularly to former senior employees. This failed because of the shortage of labour after the indenture system was abolished. Similarly the CSR failed

in an effort to establish a settlement scheme.

Finally it decided to take the major step of dividing its estates into small blocks averaging only about 11 acres, and leasing them at low rentals to Indians who were then helped in many ways to establish themselves.

CSR guaranteed to take the cane.

“The boldest experiment in colonial agriculture during the pre sent century,” said an authority. Most people said it wouldn’t work; the Indians weren’t up to it. In 1925 Indian tenants were cultivating 1C per cent of the CSR cane lands com pared with the company’s 52 pei cent; by 1934, after the new system had been established, Indian tenants were cultivating 53 per cent com pared with the company’s six pei cent. And that soon dropped to less than three per cent.

The CSR scheme gave the Indian: economic independence; a chance t( start out on their own. The CSR, ii short, developed social and economk stability in the colony through th( creation of a body of small, in dependent farmers. It also kep individual farms to an economic size thus avoiding the fragmentation whicl brought troubles to Asia. And by it constant supervision and help th key to CSR’s activities for the small holders —it improved Fiji’s farmin practices and soil fertility.

Here was enlightened self-interes at work. Stable and efficient agricul ture was to the advantage of th CSR, the farmers and the Fiji Go\ ernment, and has remained so.

More than 15,000 farmers ar dependent on sugar—plus of cours their families. And there are 2,50 workers in the mills.

So the CSR’s work has come to ai end.

In Fiji the other day I found som apprehension that the traditions efficiency established by the CS might come unstuck now that th government is boss. That millworkei might take advantage of the ne; ownership and go slow, or pull a wildcat strikes of the type that hay become increasingly a part of Fiji industrial scene lately.

The apprehension might be uncalle for. Perhaps it’s only a case of fin night jitters.

But it won’t be CSR’s worrry.

Stuart Inder