JNF-The-Working-Class-Struggle-of-Half-a-Century

8 A QUESTION OF WAGES
In Antigua, representatives of sugar estates and factory interests met on
the 8 th May, 1929, to discuss the outlook of the sugar industry in that
Island. The meeting decided that owing to drought, a short crop and low
prices, the British Government should be asked to give financial aid by
way of loan at low rate of interest.
In the St. Kitts, conditions were somewhat similar. Some people
wondered what the local sugar barons would do in the situation. A
newspaper correspondent Cane Supplier wrote: I am of the opinion that
as far as St. Kitts is concerned, an appeal to the home Government for a
loan, grant will not place sugar cane growing in St. Kitts on a sound
basis apart from the fact that the Colonial Office is not likely to recommend
aid until we are able to give some convincing figures and facts to
prove that we are in urgent need of help, a matter which looks extremely
difficult in view of annual reports of the working of the St. Kitts
(Basseterre) Sugar Factory Ltd. for the past five years, showing comparatively
good profits and declaring substantial dividends. The writer
continued: There is also the important fact that owing to the terms between
the cane suppliers and the Basseterre Sugar Factory being so
disadvantageous to the former, Imperial aid, to my mind will be only
palliative and therefore unsound.
Wage Cut
In 1930 the London Office of the Sugar Factory issued instructions to
reduce the wages of the workers at the factory. As a result of the announcement
the men refused to commence their week at the reduced
rate of pay, and staged a walk-out on Friday, 11 th April, 1930. To them,
the matter had reached boiling point. It was a case where those who
controlled capital were bent on fortifying their positions, but the workers
could not subscribe to a doctrine which permitted the rich to get
richer and the poor to get poorer. By walking off the job on that Friday,
the workers were impelled by motives similar to those which had
moved the martyrs of St. Paul’s Village twelve years earlier to submit to
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