St. Croix, 1941: The Sugar Company Was the United States Government
The film of this episode premieres December 22, 2026 on YouTube. The documents, the transcript and the sources are below now.
In December 1941 Jack Delano photographed the United States Virgin Islands in Kodachrome — Christiansted, Frederiksted, the cane country of St. Croix, and Charlotte Amalie on St. Thomas. Seventy-five colour frames, all in one month. Five of his captions name the owner of the field he keeps going back to: the Virgin Islands Company.
Transcript
R001 Cultivating sugar cane on the Virgin Islands Company land, vicinity of Bethlehem, Saint Croix
Jack Delano · Bethlehem, St. Croix · December 1941 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome slide. View the original.
The people hoeing this field worked for the United States government. So did the field.
R002 Cultivating sugar cane of the Virgin Islands Company land, vicinity of Bethlehem, St. Croix
Jack Delano · Bethlehem, St. Croix · December 1941 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome slide. View the original.
Jack Delano wrote the owner into the caption. The Virgin Islands Company.
Whose field this is
The company had three incorporators. The Secretary of the Interior. The Assistant Secretary of the Interior. And the Governor of the Virgin Islands.
R003 Cultivating sugar cane on the Virgin Islands Company land, vicinity of Bethlehem, St. Croix
Jack Delano · Bethlehem, St. Croix · December 1941 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome slide. View the original.
He photographed this one field four times in December 1941.
R004 Cultivating sugar cane on the Virgin Islands Company land, vicinity of Bethlehem, St. Croix
Jack Delano · Bethlehem, St. Croix · December 1941 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome slide. View the original.
From the far end of it, the crew is six marks on a very large piece of ground.
The Governor's report to the Secretary of the Interior says where the money came from. Federal emergency relief funds.
Three million, four hundred and nine thousand, four hundred and four dollars. And fifty cents.
It itemises what that bought. Two sugar mills. A distillery. Five thousand acres of land. Villages. Estate houses.
R005 A Virgin Islands company housing project, vicinity of Bethlehem, Saint Croix
Jack Delano · Bethlehem, St. Croix · December 1941 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome slide. View the original.
Delano photographed one of the villages. His caption calls it a Virgin Islands company housing project.
What collapsed in 1930
None of it was built from nothing. A Danish corporation had failed here in 1930, holding thirteen thousand acres and about a thousand jobs.
R006 Ruins of an old sugar mill and plantation house, vicinity of Christiansted, Saint Croix, Virgin Islands
Jack Delano · Christiansted, St. Croix · December 1941 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome slide. View the original.
Because of its relatively great size, the report says, it dominated the island economically and politically.
R007 Ruins of an old sugar mill and plantation house, vicinity of Christiansted, Saint Croix, Virgin Islands
Jack Delano · Christiansted, St. Croix · December 1941 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome slide. View the original.
Ruins of an old sugar mill and plantation house. Delano wrote that caption twice, on two different afternoons.
R008 Sugar cane country, the Virgin Islands
Jack Delano · U.S. Virgin Islands · December 1941 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome slide. View the original.
Then the government bought the wreck and went into the sugar business.
R009 Sugar farms along the northern coast, Saint Croix Island, Virgin Islands
Jack Delano · St. Croix · December 1941 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome slide. View the original.
Sugar farms along the northern coast.
R010 Sugar cane fields on the north-west part of the island, St. Croix island, Virgin Islands
Jack Delano · St. Croix · December 1941 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome slide. View the original.
Cane fields on the north-west part of the island. That year's crop was about two thousand tons, the lowest in many years, after three years of drought.
Astride island economy
By 1940 the government's company grew forty percent of the island's cane, milled sixty to seventy percent of its raw sugar, and made eighty percent of its rum.
The report has a phrase for that. A dominant position, astride island economy.
The town the sugar built
R011 The Virgin Islands, general view of the sea coast in the vicinity of Christiansted, Saint Croix
Jack Delano · Christiansted, St. Croix · December 1941 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome slide. View the original.
The town the sugar paid for stands on the north shore.
R012 General view of sea coast, vicinity of Christiansted, Saint Croix, Virgin Islands
Jack Delano · Christiansted, St. Croix · December 1941 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome slide. View the original.
He shot the same view twice from the hill above it.
R013 The main shopping street, Christiansted, Saint Croix, Virgin Islands
Jack Delano · Christiansted, St. Croix · December 1941 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome slide. View the original.
The main shopping street.
R014 Prince Street, Christiansted, St. Croix, U.S. Virgin Islands
Jack Delano · Christiansted, St. Croix · December 1941 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome slide. View the original.
Prince Street, under the arcades the Danes built.
R015 Street in Christiansted, St. Croix Virgin Islands
Jack Delano · Christiansted, St. Croix · December 1941 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome slide. View the original.
Street in Christiansted. Seventeen of the sixty-six frames in this film have the word street in the caption.
R016 Street in Christiansted, St. Croix, Virgin Islands
Jack Delano · Christiansted, St. Croix · December 1941 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome slide. View the original.
Street in Christiansted again, one block over.
R017 Street in Christiansted, Saint Croix, Virgin Islands
Jack Delano · Christiansted, St. Croix · December 1941 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome slide. View the original.
And again. Some of them he could not place afterwards.
R018 Street scene, Christiansted, St. Croix, Virgin Islands?
Jack Delano · Christiansted, St. Croix · December 1941 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome slide. View the original.
Twelve of the seventy-five captions carry a question mark. Street scene, Christiansted, Saint Croix, Virgin Islands — question mark.
R019 Street scene, Christiansted, St. Croix Island, Virgin Islands?
Jack Delano · Christiansted, St. Croix · December 1941 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome slide. View the original.
Same caption. Same question mark.
R020 Street scene, Christiansted, St. Croix island, Virgin Islands?
Jack Delano · Christiansted, St. Croix · December 1941 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome slide. View the original.
And again, with the children going up the lane.
R021 A street in a town of the Virgin Islands, Christiansted, Saint Croix
Jack Delano · Christiansted, St. Croix · December 1941 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome transparency. View the original.
A street in a town of the Virgin Islands, this one says, before it commits to a name.
R022 Christiansted, Saint Croix, Virgin Islands. Catholic i.e. Anglican Church
Jack Delano · Christiansted, St. Croix · December 1941 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome slide. View the original.
The church he filed as Catholic. The Library has bracketed in the correction. Anglican.
R023 Houses in Saint Croix island, city of Christiansted, Virgin Islands. Catholic i.e. Anglican church in the background
Jack Delano · Christiansted, St. Croix · December 1941 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome slide. View the original.
It stands behind the houses in the next frame, and the same bracket follows it there.
R024 House in the Virgin Islands, Christiansted, St. Croix?
Jack Delano · Christiansted, St. Croix · December 1941 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome slide. View the original.
House in the Virgin Islands, Christiansted, Saint Croix — question mark.
R025 The Virgin Islands? St. Croix?
Jack Delano · St. Croix · December 1941 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome slide. View the original.
The Virgin Islands, question mark. Saint Croix, question mark. The date on the tower is 1860.
R026 Palm trees along the road, vicinity of Christiansted, Saint Croix, Virgin Islands
Jack Delano · Christiansted, St. Croix · December 1941 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome transparency. View the original.
Palm trees along the road. That one he was sure of.
The harbour
R027 Along the waterfront, Christiansted, Saint Croix, Virgin Islands
Jack Delano · Christiansted, St. Croix · December 1941 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome slide. View the original.
Nine of the frames he kept are the water.
R028 Along the waterfront, Christiansted, Saint Croix, Virgin Islands
Jack Delano · Christiansted, St. Croix · December 1941 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome slide. View the original.
Along the waterfront, he wrote, and wrote again.
R029 Along the waterfront, Christiansted, Saint Croix, Virgin Islands
Jack Delano · Christiansted, St. Croix · December 1941 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome transparency. View the original.
A lighter under sail, tied up against the barrels.
R030 Part of the harbor, Christiansted, St. Croix, Virgin Islands
Jack Delano · Christiansted, St. Croix · December 1941 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome slide. View the original.
Part of the harbour, from the hill.
R031 Part of the harbor, Christiansted, St. Croix, Virgin Islands
Jack Delano · Christiansted, St. Croix · December 1941 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome slide. View the original.
Part of the harbour again, closer in.
R032 The harbor, Christiansted, St. Croix, Virgin Islands
Jack Delano · Christiansted, St. Croix · December 1941 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome slide. View the original.
The harbour.
R033 The harbor, Christiansted, St. Croix, Virgin Islands
Jack Delano · Christiansted, St. Croix · December 1941 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome slide. View the original.
The sugar left the island through here, and so did the rum.
Eighty cents and a dollar
The Governor's report is candid about what the work paid. Eighty cents and a dollar a day. Not high, it says, but higher than when the company began.
Then this. Increases have had to be brought about by strikes, which have at times embittered relations and cast doubt on the sincerity of the Government's purposes.
Most of them, the same page goes on, are still casual laborers. Employed when they are needed and dismissed when they are not.
R034 A cattle farm, vicinity of Christiansted, St. Croix, Virgin Islands
Jack Delano · Christiansted, St. Croix · December 1941 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome slide. View the original.
A cattle farm. Cattle used about two thirds of the island and provided less than five percent of the work.
R035 A farm road near one of the "villages" on the northern coast, Saint Croix island, Virgin Islands
Jack Delano · St. Croix · December 1941 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome slide. View the original.
A farm road near one of the villages on the northern coast.
R036 A farm road near one of the "villages" on the northern coast, St. Croix, Virgin Islands
Jack Delano · St. Croix · December 1941 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome slide. View the original.
The same caption again. Delano put the word villages in quotation marks both times, and never says why.
R037 Houses on St. Croix island, Virgin Islands
Jack Delano · St. Croix · December 1941 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome slide. View the original.
Houses on Saint Croix island.
R038 St. Croix, Virgin Islands
Jack Delano · St. Croix · December 1941 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome slide. View the original.
And this one is filed under the name of the island and nothing else.
No pier
R039 The harbor, Frederiksted, Saint Croix island, Virgin Islands
Jack Delano · Frederiksted, St. Croix · December 1941 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome slide. View the original.
Forty miles down the coast is the other town, and its harbour has a problem.
R040 Loading cargo on a freighter in the harbor of Frederiksted, St. Croix, Virgin Islands. Because there is no pier, the ship must anchor far from shore
Jack Delano · Frederiksted, St. Croix · December 1941 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome slide. View the original.
Loading cargo on a freighter, Delano writes. Because there is no pier, the ship must anchor far from shore.
R041 Street in a town Frederiksted, St. Croix, in the Virgin Islands
Jack Delano · Frederiksted, St. Croix · December 1941 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome slide. View the original.
The street behind it. This frame is filed under the wrong island, and the Library has bracketed the right town back in.
R042 Frederiksted, Saint Croix, Virgin Islands ... church
Jack Delano · Frederiksted, St. Croix · December 1941 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome slide. View the original.
A church with the roof gone and the windows still standing.
R043 In the old fort built by the French, Frederiksted, Saint Croix, Virgin Islands
Jack Delano · Frederiksted, St. Croix · December 1941 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome slide. View the original.
In the old fort built by the French, he wrote. The date over the arch is 1760.
R044 In the old fort built by the French, Frederiksted, Saint Croix island, Virgin Islands
Jack Delano · Frederiksted, St. Croix · December 1941 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome slide. View the original.
He went through the arch and shot it again from the other side.
R045 Housewives at the seashore waiting for the fishing boats to come in, Frederiksted, Saint Croix, Virgin Islands
Jack Delano · Frederiksted, St. Croix · December 1941 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome slide. View the original.
Housewives at the seashore, waiting for the fishing boats to come in.
R046 Housewives at the seashore waiting for the fishing boats to come in Frederiksted, Saint Croix, Virgin Islands
Jack Delano · Frederiksted, St. Croix · December 1941 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome slide. View the original.
He wrote that caption twice. The second time he left out the comma and nothing else.
The cheaper program
R047 FSA borrower who lives in village La Vallee, St. Croix island, Virgin Islands
Jack Delano · La Vallee, St. Croix · December 1941 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome slide. View the original.
The first man Delano stops and photographs alone is an FSA borrower who lives in the village of La Vallee.
The same report that defends the company also measures it against something much cheaper.
For only a fraction of the cost of this venture, it says, the homestead program has made substantial steps toward the permanent rehabilitation of over three hundred families.
Three thousand five hundred and fifty-two acres, bought and cut into plots, sold under rental-purchase contracts to three hundred and twenty-eight small holders. Twenty annual payments.
R048 Street in the village of La Vallee, St. Croix, Virgin Islands
Jack Delano · La Vallee, St. Croix · December 1941 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome slide. View the original.
The village of La Vallee. Six of Delano's captions name that program; five name the government's company.
R049 Farm Security Administration borrower, vicinity of Frederiksted, St. Croix, Virgin Islands
Jack Delano · Frederiksted, St. Croix · December 1941 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome slide. View the original.
Farm Security Administration borrower, vicinity of Frederiksted.
R050 Farm Security Administration borrower, vicinity of Frederiksted, St. Croix, Virgin Islands
Jack Delano · Frederiksted, St. Croix · December 1941 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome slide. View the original.
Farm Security Administration borrower, vicinity of Frederiksted.
R051 Farm Security Administration borrower, vicinity of Frederiksted, St. Croix, Virgin Islands
Jack Delano · Frederiksted, St. Croix · December 1941 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome transparency. View the original.
Farm Security Administration borrower, vicinity of Frederiksted. Three frames, and not one name in any of them.
R052 Farm Security Administration borrower cultivating his sugar cane field, vicinity of Frederiksted, St. Croix, Virgin Islands. He lives in one of the homestead houses
Jack Delano · Frederiksted, St. Croix · December 1941 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome slide. View the original.
This one is cultivating his own cane. He lives in one of the homestead houses, the caption adds.
R053 Farm Security Administration borrower plowing his garden with one of the few plows used on the island, vicinity of Frederiksted, St. Croix, Virgin Islands
Jack Delano · Frederiksted, St. Croix · December 1941 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome slide. View the original.
And this one is ploughing his garden with one of the few ploughs used on the island.
R054 Woman in her garden, Virgin Islands?
Jack Delano · U.S. Virgin Islands · December 1941? · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome slide. View the original.
A woman in her garden. Virgin Islands, question mark.
In normal years, the report says, more than ninety percent of the payments due on that land and those houses came in on time.
The tax no one else paid
There was also what the government did to itself. Saint Croix sugar paid the federal processing tax and received no benefit payments back — alone of all sugar producers under the American flag.
Sixteen to eighteen dollars less on every ton. A quarter to a third of the value of the crop.
The Governor of a United States territory called it, in writing, to the Secretary of the Interior, a burdensome, discriminatory, and un-American tax.
The other island
R055 Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas, Virgin Islands, (capitol)
Jack Delano · Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas · December 1941 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome slide. View the original.
He wrote it from the other island. Delano photographed a building there with the name painted across the front of it.
R056 View down the main street from the Grand Hotel, Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas Island, Virgin Islands
Jack Delano · Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas · December 1941 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome slide. View the original.
No cane grows there. The money comes off ships.
R057 View down the main street from the Grand Hotel, Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas Island, Virgin Islands
Jack Delano · Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas · December 1941 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome transparency. View the original.
View down the main street from the Grand Hotel. He wrote that caption three times.
R058 One of the steep hillside streets, Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas Virgin Islands
Jack Delano · Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas · December 1941 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome slide. View the original.
One of the steep streets on the hillsides.
R059 One of the steep streets on the hillsides, Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas, Virgin Islands
Jack Delano · Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas · December 1941 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome slide. View the original.
And another.
R060 One of the steep streets on the hillsides, Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas Island, Virgin Islands
Jack Delano · Charlotte Amalie, St. Thomas · December 1941 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome slide. View the original.
And another. Houses stacked up a hill, with the harbour underneath them.
The report puts both islands in one sentence. Income tax, 1942 — three hundred and sixteen thousand dollars on the shipping island, thirty thousand on the sugar island.
R061 French village, a small settlement on St. Thomas Island, Virgin Islands
Jack Delano · St. Thomas · December 1941 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome slide. View the original.
A small settlement he called the French village.
R062 French village, a small settlement on St. Thomas Island, Virgin Islands
Jack Delano · St. Thomas · December 1941 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome transparency. View the original.
And the harbour it looks down on, which is what the tax was counting.
R063 St. John's Anglican Church, King Street, St. Croix, Virgin Islands
Jack Delano · St. Croix · December 1941 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome slide. View the original.
This church is filed under that island. The Library has bracketed it back to the other one — forty miles, in the government's own picture file.
R064 On the coast of St. Thomas, Virgin Islands?
Jack Delano · St. Thomas · December 1941 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome slide. View the original.
The coast, question mark.
What Congress did next
In the fiscal year these photographs sit in, the council on Saint Croix repealed the export tax.
And Congress finally applied the Sugar Act of 1937 to the Virgin Islands. Both of those came the year after Delano left.
What is not in the file
R065 The coast of St. Thomas? Virgin Islands
Jack Delano · St. Thomas · December 1941 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome slide. View the original.
He was standing on the most eastern outpost of the United States, in the month the country entered the war. In all seventy-five frames there is no soldier, no warship, no gun.
R066 The Virgin Islands, sugar cane country
Jack Delano · U.S. Virgin Islands · December 1941 · Library of Congress · FSA/OWI Kodachrome transparency. View the original.
What he photographed instead was the cane, and who it belonged to.
Sources
- These are period Kodachromes, not colorized photographs. 59 are 35mm slides and 7 are 4×5 transparencies. No machine colorization is used anywhere in this episode and no synthetic-media disclosure applies to the images.
- Masters were pulled from the Wikimedia Commons mirror of the same file at 3,000–3,900 px. One frame (LC-USF35-446, a Christiansted street) exists only at 1,024 px on Commons and tile.loc.gov refuses CLI clients, so it is not used — enlarging it to 1080 would have been a 1.9× blow-up.
- Photo dates come from each record's own `created_published_date`, never from a harvest timestamp. Every one reads *1941 Dec.*; one reads *1941 Dec.?*, and that question mark is kept on screen.
- Two credits deliberately disagree with the Library's place field, because the Library's own caption bracket does: - LC-USF35-420 is filed under Saint Thomas; its caption reads *Street in a town [Frederiksted, St. Croix]*. Credited to Frederiksted. - LC-USF35-481 is filed under Charlotte Amalie; its caption reads *[St. John's Anglican Church, King Street, St. Croix]*. Credited to St. Croix.
- FY1940 — fiscal year ended June 30, 1940; transmitted from Charlotte Amalie, September 20, 1940. <https://archive.org/details/annualreportofgo1940virg>; Printed pages 8, 10, 13, 15, 16, 18.
- FY1941 — fiscal year ended June 30, 1941; Governor Charles Harwood; transmitted August 15, 1941. <https://archive.org/details/annualreportofgo1941virg>; Printed page 1, used for the population, cattle and crop figures.
- FY1942 — fiscal year ended June 30, 1942; transmitted September 1, 1942. <https://archive.org/details/annualreportofgo1942virg>; Printed pages 3, 4.
- The roadmap entry that produced this episode said "four years after the islanders got US citizenship." That is wrong and the episode does not say it. Virgin Islanders were made United States citizens by the Act of February 25, 1927 — fourteen years before these photographs. The 1936 Organic Act, which both Governors cite as the authority they report under, is five years before.
- No figure is given for what the Virgin Islands Company lost in 1941. The FY1940 report's five-year net loss of $139,926.49 runs only to June 30, 1939, and the episode does not stretch it forward.
- The absence of any military subject in the December 1941 frames is stated as an observation about the file — something a viewer can check — and not as a claim about what was or was not on the islands. The FY1942 report describes extensive military preparations on both islands and declines to record them, "which may not properly be recorded at this time."
- The three Frederiksted borrower portraits are described as three frames, not three men. Delano did not write down who any of them were.