A Footnote to History: Eight Years of Trouble in SamoaStevenson, Robert Louis
History
A Footnote to History: Eight Years of Trouble in Samoa
Stevenson, Robert Louis
Samoan Islands -- History
merchants, he had condemned the single dependence placed on copra for the
national livelihood. His recruits, even as they drilled, were taught to
plant cacao. Each, his term of active service finished, should return to
his own land and plant and cultivate a stipulated area. Thus, as the
young men continued to pass through the army, habits of discipline and
industry, a central sentiment, the principles of the new culture, and
actual gardens of cacao, should be concurrently spread over the face of
the islands.
Tamasese received, including his household expenses, 1960 dollars a year;
Brandeis, 2400. All such disproportions are regrettable, but this is not
extreme: we have seen horses of a different colour since then. And the
Tamaseseites, with true Samoan ostentation, offered to increase the
salary of their white premier: an offer he had the wisdom and good
feeling to refuse. A European chief of police received twelve hundred.
There were eight head judges, one to each province, and appeal lay from
the district judge to the provincial, thence to Mulinuu. From all
salaries (I gather) a small monthly guarantee was withheld. The army was
to cost from three to four thousand, Apia (many whites refusing to pay
taxes since the suppression of the municipality) might cost three
thousand more: Sir Becker's high feat of arms coming expensive (it will
be noticed) even in money. The whole outlay was estimated at
twenty-seven thousand; and the revenue forty thousand: a sum Samoa is
well able to pay.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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