Maroc - NEWSDAY.CO.TT - A la Une - 21/12/2025 10:23

The vision of APT James

(Part II) The sections of the James Memorandum which deal with the health and social services provide a valuable window into the working and living conditions of workers of Tobago and its social state during the 1940s. James indicates that there were improvements in the health services, such as the establishment of dispensaries, which contributed to a reduction in malaria – in spite of which the continued presence of the disease was cause for great concern. He lamented the deficiency of medical services, which, he asserts, was related to the insufficient number of doctors. One of his primary areas of concern was human development. James said the majority of the island’s male population was skilled or semi-skilled, a result of the common practice of sending boys to be apprenticed to a tradesman after they left school. He lamented that although Tobago had a large force of skilled or semi-skilled men, there was a scarcity of opportunities for them to practise those skills. Young men in Tobago, he asserted, were therefore forced into one of three options to support themselves: fishing; agriculture, for which they had little or no training; or migration. While there were elementary schools across the island, the quality of education was very bad. Most schools lacked basic equipment, had inadequate teaching staff and, in most districts, buildings unable to accommodate the growing school population. Thus some children were denied an education. Nearly all the schools were denominational, but the churches were unable to do all the required repairs, and some schools were in such a bad state that the government, considering them too dangerous to be used, forced their closure. Despite the poor education, James asserted that illiteracy was not very high, for most people could read and write, in addition to which, he said, the people of Tobago had “a high degree of native intelligence.” James believed there was an urgent need for technical and scientific education, and asked for a centre for technical training for boys and girls on the island. In the memorandum, James illustrated the irony of Tobago, a land of abundant labour from which numbers of people had to migrate to Trinidad in search of jobs, because there was a lack of large-scale development programmes to absorb their labour. The government of the colony, through the Department of Works and Hydraulics, was the main source of employment. All other options were either seasonal or casual work on the estates. He described Tobago as an island where the majority of the population were peasants with plots of land ranging from one to five acres, on which they grew food crops and some cocoa. There were a few large contractors who supported the big cocoa and coconut estates. Under the terms of their contracts, they were required to hand over their cultivation after five years and were paid according to the number of mature trees on the land; but the compensation they received was small, after deductions for loans and other hidden costs. Few could buy land, which was possible only when estates chose to sell, but most people could not even afford suitable homes. James reiterated the need for radical land reforms to let people own land and earn enough to support their families. James presented a depressing image of the wages paid to the workers of Tobago. Before the outbreak of World War II, government workers were the most highly paid of all wage workers on the island. They worked from 7am-5 pm from Monday-Friday and 7am-1 pm on Saturdays. Men earned 40-50 cents per day and women 24-36 cents. James argued that the “barefooted and ragged labourers” had to supplement their meagre earnings with gardening and fishing. The terms of estate labour varied between districts, but mainly casual and seasonal employment was offered, primarily during the reaping season. Labour terms were affected by the market prices for cocoa and copra. Before the war, the daily wage for a workday from 7am- 4pm was between 30 and 40 cents for men and 18-24 cents for women. Wages increased during the war by ten-20 cents for men and 12 cents for women. When prices were low, the estates adopted a job, task or piecework system, under which workers were given a specific wage for a specific piece of work. High post-war prices for cocoa and coconuts led to increased wages: workers received between $1 and $1.50 a day for task work. However, because of high levels of inflation during the war, there was no increase in their standard of living. James’ memorandum also included the problems of communication and trade. Even though Tobago had many safe harbours, most were not in places useful for commerce. He stressed that the island needed a harbour in the area where production was greatest. He complained that the island’s only harbour was developed in Scarborough, where much needed to be done to speed up loading and unloading. He indicated that any increase in production in Tobago would seriously challenge the limited facilities of Scarborough harbour and cause perishable goods to spoil, leading to losses to owners. Tobago, he said, needed a modern harbour, and suggested it should be at Plymouth, one of the best harbours on the island, close to the largest estates. He also suggested there should be modern harbours in Roxborough, King’s Bay and Charlotteville, which were areas of heavy cocoa production. James’ mission to London was aimed at obtaining funds from the imperial government to develop Tobago. So he recommended injections of funds from the Colonial Development Corporation should be used to develop the island’s resources and improve the standard of living of the people of Tobago. He lamented that the colonial government had consistently ignored the need for planning for Tobago’s development and asserted that the population could not depend on the colonial administration, which had been indifferent to the problems. He wanted the imperial government to take the lead and shift the colonial government’s inaction to a programme for training skilled workers to develop agriculture, terminating the importation of food which could be produced locally, and giving attention to improving wages and living conditions. While the memorandum is a rich source of information about the administrative challenges Tobago faced, James failed to stimulate any positive intervention by the imperial government. The post The vision of APT James appeared first on Trinidad and Tobago Newsday.