Customs!

Back To His Old

Samoan Natives’ Answer to Depression.

The case of Western Samoa, described hereunder by our correspondent, affords a striking example of how the worldwide fall in commodity prices has affected commercial structures in the remotest places and is destroying , among native communities, standards of living which have been built up as the result of a century's contact with Europeans.

Samoa, in the past, depended on three main products copra, cocoa and bananas. Copra, in two years, has fallen from £14 to less than £9 per ton, London; cocoa has fallen from £50 to £7/10/per ton; and the banana market is desperately restricted. The Samoan natives depend on copra and bananas. At the present prices they refuse to produce.

Apia, Nov. 3.

FOR nearly one hundred years, the white man has tried his best to convince the Samoan that he should buy certain luxuries from the trading stations and has induced him to cut the maximum quantity of copra to pay for these luxuries. Now, all at once, the labour of the last 100 years seems to be wiped out.

The native is going back to the old customs and ways of living of his ancestors, before the white man’s advent.

No more tinned meat and salmon for him—there are plenty of pigs, fowls, and fish available. No more soap—he uses la’u fisoa leaves instead for washing clothes! Salt is replaced by sea water, sugar by sugar cane, kerosene by coconut shell fire or coconut oil. And the weaving of the tapa cloth is re vived all over the islands—the Samoans dispense with the cotton lava-lavas of the white man.

The missions, schools, the motor taxis and ’buses, the motor boats and the cinema—all are suffering from the lack of money. And last, and not least, here is the administration faced with the loss of most of its revenue.