The Home Journal

OTHMAN SAYS:
Nothing Ever Works Out
Right in Virgin
Islands

By
Fred Othman

Washington, July 22--We've got trouble in paradise again. Seems like nothing ever works out right in the Virgin Islands.

If it's not water, it's rum. Let us first consider the water, which is scarce in the beautiful Virgins.

The rum is plentiful.

An official report of the congressional committee on government operations charged that Gov. Walter A. Gordon and helpers decided last year to get a self propelled barge from the navy to haul water over from Puerto Rico.

The Navy offered it free, if the governor would pay outfitting expenses. Then he did and was about to put it into service when his harbormaster decided a tugboat with a separate barge would be better. The governor agreed and he got a bill from the navy for taking the first ship out of mothballs and putting it back in again for $39,743.99.

Capt. Benjamin R. Yates, who figured a tug and barge were best, found this seagoing combination in Baltimore, Md. The governor paid $115,000 for the tug and $17,000 for the barge, which arrived in St. Thomas on June 6. The barge had sprung a number of leaks, while the tug had a busted propeller, repair costs $24,410.06. Leaks and creaking machinery have been plaguing the vessels ever since. (Continued on Page 3)
Nothing Ever Works Out Right
in
Virgin
Islands

Tourists keep going to the picturesque Virgins in ever-increasing numbers, new hotels go up to house them and that water shortage is getting worse. The barge, even when not laid up for plugging leaks, can carry enough water to last only one day in the one town of Charlotte Amalie. So the governor and the Department of Interior are thinking about maybe distilling sea water. The investigators said they'd done nothing about it this year except think.

The rum situation is sorrier still. It used to be that the Virgin Islands Company under command of Honest Harold Ickes turned a nice penny for Uncle Sam growing sugar, boiling this into molasses and distilling the latter into rum under the government house label. The drys here in the States said they were sympathetic to the residents of the Virgin Islands, but they did not see how Uncle Sam in good conscience could manufacture the demon rum and peddle it to the thirsty ones on the mainland. They said they were tax-payers and they intended to have none of their money spent promoting rum. Uncle quickly got out of the rum business; he dumped the last consignment into the sea.

His Virgin Islands Company still was in the sugar business, and here lately it has been making molasses, which it sells to two privately-owned rum distillers in the islands for around 10 cents a gallon. This is considerably less than rummakers elsewhere have to pay, and the congressmen charge that the federal government thus is subsidizing the rum business. This is as bad as making the stuff, insofar as the drys are concerned. Maybe worse.

But if Uncle stops selling bargain molasses to the two distilleries, they have to go out of business and the federal tax of $0.50 a gallon on the finished product disappears. This is especially bad for the Virgins because the tax is remitted to them to help pay their expenses.

So we've got to have more water in the Virgin Islands, while the lawgivers haven't quite decided what to do about that rum. They may have to investigate some more. I trust they will put this off until winter, when the Virgin Islands are among the pleasantest spots in the Western Hemisphere.