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On Andros Island, Axel Wenner-Gren, the Swedish tycoon (Electrolux vacuum cleaners, Bofors guns), has sunk $11 million in a long-range resort-and-home-building project. On the northern end of Andros, Parker Pen Co. Chairman Kenneth S. Parker is developing 8,500 acres of building and truck-gardening land. Louis R. Wasey, former ad agency executive (Erwin, Wasey & Co.), sold frs stockholdings in 1956 to concentrate on his Cat Cay Club, a heaven for well-heeled fishermen. Biggest venture of all is Freeport, a man-made harbor, industry site and bunkering installation 81 miles east of Palm Beach, Fla., on Grand Bahama Island. A $12 million joint venture of top U.S. Shipowner Daniel K. Ludwig, Promoter Wallace Groves and British Millionaire Charles Hayward, Freeport boasts a harbor dredged 30 ft. deep and capable of handling 400-ft. ships, and offshore refueling lines that can deliver 7,500 gallons an hour.
Two Votes Apiece. The Bay Street boys run the politics as well as the boom. But even in the sparsely populated (116,530) Bahamas, the dreams that drove colonials to greater measures of self-government elsewhere in the old British Empire are stirring. Last year, at the beginning of the winter season, Nassau's taxi drivers, bus boys, power-plant workers and construction workers walked out on strike (TIME, Jan. 27, 1958). Members of the Progressive Liberal Party, they struck mostly for fairer polling laws, and they won a few concessions; e.g., men of property, who formerly could vote in every constituency where they owned or leased $14 worth of property ($7 on the out islands), were limited to only two votes apiece. Elections have not been held since, and the balance of legislative power remains Bay Street, 24 seats; P.L.P., 5.