The resignation of Lawrence W. Cramer, Governor of the Virgin Islands since 1935, was announced Dec. 2, leaving Robert Morss Lovett as Acting-Governor. Opposition has been expressed in the Islands to the suggestion that, in order to simplify civil administration and advance national defense, they should be linked with Puerto Rico under a single governor. A separate Executive is preferred, even though his status is naval.
In his annual report the retiring Governor urged the repeal of the export tax of $6 per ton on raw sugar and the transfer to the Insular Treasury of excise taxes collected on island products shipped to the United States. This last step would enable the local government to meet budgetary obligations and to make needed improvements in health, hospitalization, institutional care, education, sanitation, police protection and other municipal services. Although the rehabilitation programs in recent years have resulted in social and economic gains, these have not been enough to assure industrial prosperity and fiscal self-sufficiency for the Insular government. Extension of some of the benefits of the Social Security Act and of the National Labor Relations Act, of vocational education grants-in-aid, of Federal aid in rural housing and rural resettlement activities, as well as payment to Island farmers of benefit payments under the Sugar Act of 1937, were all recommended.
Action has been delayed on a plan, urged by the Insular government and approved by the Interior Department, to make the Virgin Islands available as a temporary refuge for a small number of European war refugees.
Allocation of $298,000 for the dredging of a harbor at Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas, as a submarine base, was announced by the Navy Department early in the year.
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