DEPRESSION UNKNOWN

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume 76, Issue 116, 19 May 1933, Page 10

DEPRESSION UNKNOWN

fanning island. ISOLATED COMMUNITY. One of the smallest and most isolated British communities in the world is the little habitation of white people on Fanning Island, where the cable station owned by Imperial and International Communications, Limited, is situated. “Seven years ago there used to be 40 white people on the island; to-day there are only 15.” said Mr. A. N. Ohlson, of the cable station staff, who arrived at Auckland by the Aorangi recently after spending two years on the island The dwindling white population, said Mr. Ohlson, wag due solely to the increasing mechanisation of the cable station. The introduction of a modern relay system of telegraphic communication had had the effect of displacing a large amount of human labour. Both Australia and New Zealand could now send messages simultaneously along the same cable system, and with the aid of an electric typewriter it was customary to send 220 letters a minute, with a maximum capacity, if necessary, of no less than 1000 letters a minute. Mr. Ohlson claims that Fanning Island docs not know there is a depression. “It. is true,” ho said, “that, the plantations, which are British owned, but arc worked largely by Gilbert Islanders, are receiving only three cents a pound for copra, and the cable station staff has received a SO per cent, cut in salaries, but the sufferings and hardships of the outside world, of which we read so much in the cables, exchanged between Vancouver and Suva, are unknown on the island.”