Can Copra-Producers

Organise Against Combines ?

Letter to the Editor.

THE Malayan Committee appointed to report on the economic condition of the coconut and other oil producing in dustries, lays particular stress on the want of co-operation among the producers in Malaya.

The same and worse can be said about us copra producers in these Islands. Cooperation or combination is unknown. We kave no representative Planters’ Associa tion or other body to voice our views and grievances. We are just the obedient slaves of those juggling with our product (to their own advantage) from the date it leaves the estate.

Meanwhile, we copra-producers live on the “bread line,” with little joy or pleasure in life, not knowing when we shall be compelled to abandon our es tates, or hand them over to others, who have been good enough to loan us money, to carry us through the depression. We pioneers of the islands who, with hard earned savings, managed to plant and bring to production the “Consols of the East,” are fools enough to sit down now and take anything that comes to us "without protest, when by co-operation and action we could approach Govern ments and others to right some of our wrongs.

In the Westminster Bank Review of October, 1934, the following remark is made in an article dealing with world trade: “On the one hand, there has arisen a very widespread impatience with the working of democratic institutions in times of crisis. At the same time, there lias been a growing awakening to the de gree of monopolization which has de veloped under the system of private en terprise, accompanied by a fear of the economic power wielded by great combines.”

How true in our industry! The vast combine of Unilever controlling our oil and fat markets —buying out opponents, one after the other, scrapping many of them, but still having to find interest on the purchase of these abandoned fac tories, all of which must react against the raw product price, in the way of over head.

Does this combination benefit mankind?

I doubt it—and so does the housewife, when buying her margarine, soap, candles, cooking oil, etc., etc.

In the case of margarine, they have been compelled to bring down the price in competition, brought about by the over-production of butter, which is produced more or less by hand by millions

of hardworking farmers, who are just eking out an existence. A margarine factory is just one vast bulk-handling by mechanical means, employing a minimum amount of labour. Yet the so-called fin ancial wizards, with all the wealth, scien tific and mechanical means at their dis posal, cannot compete in grade or price with “the small fella,” who milks the cow!

Do you not think if, by way of propa ganda, we showed the housewives of England moving pictures of the produc tion of present-day ingredients of mar garine, they would turn in disgust, and go back to butter for all purposes, or else demand a margarine with vegetable oil and milk contents only: 1. Imagine the film of a whaler depot ship, filth from topmast to keel, and not the slightest supervision by any Govern ment. 2. Compare the farm-dairy and butter factory, the essence of cleanliness and under constant Government supervision. 3. Compare the orderly, well-conducted coconut estate, with its mechanical drier, turning out a fine, white, clean product.

What have Unilever done to bring down the price of the manufactured product?

As an employer of native labour, I have to make a weekly soap issue. The main ingredients of common soap are the low est grade tallow, fats and oil— coconut oil is used only for high-class soaps, etc.

Yet, I have to pay £35 per ton wholesale for common bar soap to issue to the na tives who are producing first class copra for me, for which I nett £5-£6 per ton, Port Moresby.

Here, again, we show ourselves fools, Why buy soap? Why not make it from coconut oil and caustic soda, on our estates?

In writing the above I have tried to explain the necessity of co-operation by planters in the Pacific. What can we do? 1. By proper representation, we can ob tain a better tariff for copra, desiccated coconut, copra oil and cake, throughout the Empire. 2. We can erect central crushing-mills in these Islands. 3. Or we can even have a coconut-oil plant at sea, calling at each estate or depot, treating the product on board, in the same manner as they handle whale oil.

4. Central factories to deal with copra shell-charcoal and coir, both valuable products.

The possibilities are immense, and with money so cheap, one can hardly credit the backward state we are in. Every day one reads in the papers of the flota tion of mines for vast sums, with per haps only the surface scratched, and with poor chance for the investor, of ever getting his money back. Yet capital will not come to the Islands. Why?

I am, etc,,

G. A. Loudon.

Eilogo, Papua, 22/12/’34.

Mr. James Nason-Jones, the explorer and gold-prospector, who is well-known in Papua and New Guinea, was married on January 9 at St. Mark’s Church, Darl ing Point, Sydney, to Miss Margaret Jean Mackay, eldest daughter of Mr. and Mrs.

Donald Mackay, of Warialda, New South Wales.

Mr. John E. Donoghue, chairman of directors of the Rabaul and District Elec tric Light Supply Co., Ltd., died in Syd ney, aged 60, at the end of December.

He was an expert on electrical engineer ing matters, and was connected with most of the big Sydney electric supply cor porations.