Solomons' Imports

Decrease.

Natives Disinclined to Spend.

From Our Own Correspondent.

TULAGI, February 10.

THE Mataram arrived from Sydney on February 3, looking as though she needed ballast. She carried only 17 passengers and about 400 tons of cargo for the whole of the group: less than what used to be landed at Makambo alone.

Consequent upon this state of affairs, import revenue looks as though it will be considerably less at the year-end (March 31) than was anticipated a few months ago, when a £10,700 deficit, on estimate, was feared. In seeking for an explanation of why we miscalcu lated so badly, we find to our astonish ment that the native can, and is, doing without our wares to a much larger

extent, and in much shorter time, than we thought possible, in view of the number of years it took to educate him up to buying what he did.

Still, there it is, and we cannot blame him for doing without a lot of things he is much better without, anyhow.

Of course, his spending power has been greatly reduced as a result of his not producing copra at the low prices reigning, but it seems impossible for him to grasp the fact that, in spite of this, he can still, by marketing his own copra, make very much more than the £1 per month he is often willing to work for under “white brother.”

As to trochus shell fishing, he can now command —thanks to unwise competi tion—a very much better price than he willingly accepted for many years, and very little short of the highest price of boom-times. Yet he is not even working at this to anything like his old capacity, nor yet is he seeking work from the white man to any marked extent.

So we can only conclude that we hav’n’t “grown upon him” to a point worth talking about, after all.