The Daily News Of The Virgin Islands

ALUMINUM DILEMMA

Feelings and emotions are running high in the matter of the Harvey Alumina Virgin Islands, Inc. While the subject is being treated with mild indifferences in St. Thomas, in St. Croix many important organizations have banded together in indignant protest and have attempted to get the ears of the legislators whenever they could get hearing.

The Harvey Company is being virtually subsidized by the United States and Virgin Islands governments. What seems extremely unusual to us is that there is positively nothing in recently recorded history where both the governor and the legislature have united in such manifest disregard of what appears to be the desires of the rank and file of the people. One wonders why this is being done. What has happened?

We all know that the legislators of St. Croix, and equally those of St. Thomas, are accustomed to go to great lengths to satisfy the slightest whims of the people and to remain popular at all costs. Here we find a multi-million-dollar concern moving in against the will of the masses. Surprisingly enough, the legislators for the first time are giving the industrialist all they want, while getting very little in return, and yet defying the will of the people under whose sufferance they call themselves senators. Can it be that we are getting selfless leadership in the legislature? Only time will tell.

Certainly we should move cautiously in our negotiations with the Harvey Company. In this type of competitive industry when there is a likelihood of a serious disadvantage to other competitors, we could find ourselves in a much less favorable position than that which the legislature now hopefully anticipates.

If the Congress has decided that the Harvey Company should be situated in the Virgin Islands for reasons of national security, then there is little that can be done about it. But if it is merely the profit motive of a private concern as it seems at present- then it appears to us that the views of the constituents of the legislators should be treated with the same careful regard as in the past.