Trade And Missions.

Samarai Man Asks “Why?”

[To the Editor.] Sir, —Badly hit as the planters may be, they are in a much more favourable position than the unfortunate traders.

To set aside the initial cost of planting, a planter may be said to get nuts for the trouble of picking them up; the trader has to buy either nuts or copra, and a reasonable profit is impossible at present prices.

Moreover, “brown brother” doesn’t make copra unless the price suits him.

He sells a few bundles of nuts now and then to keep himself in “smokes,” and the unused part of his crop just rots on the ground. Since 1929 the natives in the vicinity of this station have thrown away over 200 tons of copra in this manner, for which, even at the present low price, they could have received from £800 to £1000 in solid cash.

It seems ridiculous that the Papuan Government should compel these natives to plant coconuts, and yet allow them to waste the produce from trees al ready bearing. Apparently to compel the villager to clear land and plant coconuts is not unjust, as it is for his own benefit, and for the benefit of his children; but to compel him to make copra with his surplus nuts would be most unjust, because the local trader might become a bloated capitalist on the profit from that same copra.

The articles, letters, etc., on Mission Trading seems to leave a very bad smell. The same complaints appear to come from places so widely scattered as the Solomons, New Hebrides, and Papua, and two mission societies only appear to be involved, Methodist and Presbyterian. Living in the Methodist Mission district in Papua we have seen, in an experience of 23 years, many types of Methodist missionaries, and could fill a couple of , books, not on the trading they do, but with the various excuses they make for trading. How ever, as the Rev. J. W. Burton is deal ing with this matter, it is hardly a fair thing to pass criticism until we see what the Mission Board intends to do about it.

Finally, we beg to draw your atten tion to your “editorial note” in the May issue of your paper (see page 26). You write —“Similarly, it can be said that 95 per cent. of traders nowadays are straight goers, who treat the natives fairly and decently.” Good Heavens, man! This will never do! If you per sist in this, you are utterly damned.

Don’t you ever attend lectures on mis sionaries? If you don’t, please allow us to quote a few extracts: — Rev. M. K. Gilmour (Chairman, Papuan dis trict), at the Auburn Methodist Church:— Our early navigators blazed the trail to these islands, and soon afterwards our traders made that trail a highway, carrying with them the diseases of the white man, and his morals. The effects of these diseases were horrible, etc., etc.” (Culled from the ‘‘Sydney Morning Herald.”) Rev. J. F. Goldie (Chairman, Solomon Is. dis trict) at the Pitt Street Methodist Church.

Auckland, N.Z. ‘‘God pity them if the white man with his gun, his gin bottle, and his Euro pean diseases, gets there first.” ... “The words ‘blackbirder,’ ‘trader,’ and ‘beachcomber,' did not mean much to New Zealand ears, but they had a very real meaning to natives of the Solomons,” etc., etc.

Don’t you realise that the traders came to these islands, and, finding the unfortunate natives in a state of pris tine innocence, immediately set to work and converted them into ramping roar ing cannibals, making them so de bauched that they have even been known to kill and eat missionaries.

Where will Miss B. Grimshaw and J. M.

Turnbull get their “horrible examples” from if you start to whitewash traders in this fashion? How are missionaries going to find material for their lectures, and excuses for their presence here, if there are no “gin-sodden, debauched, low-down traders” to save brown brother from? Surely it was a mis print, and you meant 5 per cent.?

In conclusion, please explain to me this riddle: —I take up, say, a grocery business in Randwick. I buy goods at as low a figure as I can get them from the wholesale firms, and retail them again at a price that brings in a reas onable profit. (I believe quite large firms do the same thing.) I am looked

upon as an honest man, and can even aspire to be a sidesman in the local church.

Then I come to, say, Papua, take out a trading licence, and open up a store, buy and sell goods just as honestly, and fairly, as I did to the residents of Rand wick. But this is “exploiting the na tives.” The missionary watches me, tells his congregation that I am waxing rich on the proceeds of their copra (I achieved a loss of nearly £100 last year); the patrol officer calls regularly to make sure I haven’t murdered any of my labour-boys; in short, never re alised what a low-down thing “trade” is until I came to have business rela tions with “brown brother.”

But, why? Kindly explain that to me, Mr. Editor, and I’ll thank you.

I am, etc.,

E. W. Harrison.

Sebulugomura, Samarai, Papua, June 5, 1932.