GRIFFITHS A MAN WITH CIVIC ZEAL
GEORGE Griffiths' civic zeal showed itself in the causes he advocated in The Fiji Times and the many public offices he held.
He served on the committees of both the Levuka and Suva Chambers of Commerce and the school boards of both towns as secretary of Levuka and treasurer in Suva of the Church of England, and as president of the tennis club of both Levuka and Suva.
The Fiji Times was not his only commercial interest. In 1884, he was a director of the then Fiji
Fire and Maritime Insurance Company Ltd and in the early years of the century, he ran an active land agency.
For a time, Griffiths promoted the sales of non-alcoholic stimulant named "Zoedone" a "delicious, sparkly phosphate iron beverage which steadies the nerves, supports the strength and quenches the thirst". Griffiths' newspaper activities spread to Western Samoa, where he founded the Samoa Times. History repeated itself later when the Samoa
Times was bought by Mr Alport Barker who purchased The Fiji Times in 1918.
When Griffiths first went to Levuka, he recalled in the Cyclopedia of Fiji, 36 years later, that all the materials for the production of The Fiji Times had to be imported in small and irregular sailing craft from England and New South Wales.
Griffiths also faced "many periods of political unrest and climatic disturbances in the shape of hurricanes".
This was a period, he said, when "there was no form of government whatsoever".
But "considering the freedom from restrain which the settlers enjoyed, every man doing as he thought right in his own eyes, the community was an exceedingly orderly one, and comparatively few disturbances occurred.
"For the first two years….the press played an important part in the preservation of order."
The Cyclopedia of Fiji told of one way the process worked:
"Club law was the only law by which any redress or satisfaction could be obtained." NEXT WEEK:
To be continued