teriorating in the peculiar mud of that sea-bed. Elsewhere the sea-bed is volcanic and destructive to cables. The cable-ship was lost in the cataclysm of St. Pierre. The West Indian Islands, themselves impoverished, constantly diminish the subsidies which they pay to the Company. The French Colonies of Martinique and Guadeloupe have transferred their subsidies, naturally enough, from the British to the French cable company. The traffics are miserable—16s. a day to and from St. Vincent, and 50s. a day to and from Grenada.
The action of the State in causing a heavily subsidized cable to be laid in 1898 from Bermuda to Jamaica not only deprived the West India and Panama Company of a large part of its Jamaica traffic, but also penalized it in another manner, in virtue of its existing traffic arrangements with the companies carrying traffic to the United States. The company pays nothing on its ordinary stock, and only part of the dividend on its preference stock.
There is a good deal of instruction to be drawn from the above facts. People who urge the State to compete in laying cables against its own private citizens forget that this may result in the ruin of the private enterprise, already hard pressed by foreign rivals; so that the State itself will have eventually to embark upon that business at great expense. It is to be hoped that such an outlay of public money may be avoidable in this case. 'We do not think,' said the Cable Committee of 1902, 'that the remedy lies in Government intervention. The real obstacle to the prosperity of the West Indian companies is the lack of through traffic, and we anticipate that the problem will ultimately be solved by treating the West Indian cables as part of a larger whole.'[1]
- ↑ Second Report, paragraph 46.
