Mysteries Of The Copra Market

From a Special Correspondent.

London, Jan. 22.

THE Copra market seems to have taken a definite trend for the better. But how long it will last, is a horse of another colour.

One of the brilliant Financial Editors of one of the Sunday newspapers starts his page this week by: “I had a letter from a friend in Fiji last week . . . He runs a 7,000 acre Plantation (coconut).

His landlords are the ‘Ecclesiastical Commissioners’, who I believe are the world’s largest owners of land”; and so on until the Benevolent Editor is asked whether his good friend in Fiji should sell his land and come home, or words to that effect. And the “B.E.” has told him not to.

With all due respect to such an august person, I feel that if the Benevolent Editor were asked what copra is made from and also why it is made, he would need to refer to a book to have the questinn answered for him The reason I am giving all this detail

is to enable the reader of your journal, to understand just how much faith they may put into any report which appears in the ultra-controlled English news papers.

Some of the reasons given for the rise in the selling price of copra are too well known to the coconut planter to need re telling; but, at the same time, there is a strangeness in the air, and even the Benevolent Editor will need to dig deep down to explain the position.

I refer to the lowering of the retail price of soap. Sunlight soap, which has never been (at least not for some years) below 5d per box, has now dropped to 4d, or fully 20 per cent., and at the same time the selling price of the essential parts have increased almost that equiva lent. In fact, although all vegetable oils have advanced fairly rapidly, the com modities which need the oil for their manufacture have been reduced in price.

The cotton seed market is not so plenti fully supplied as during the past few years; consequently Soya Bean oil has benefitted to the extent of £2 per long ton. But whale oil has not moved much, and the soap people have purchased the balance of the Norwegian stocks of this commodity for around £10 per ton.

But, with all this, the exact position of the copra industry is still shrouded in mystery, and it is still impossible to get anything definite in the way of a forecast from the people who have handled the produce for over 25 years past.

In any case, seeing that Soya Bean is a short oil producing crop, and also that 80 per cent, of it comes from a foreign country, why cannot the British Govern ment put a huge embargo on it, so as to give the Empire copra producers a chance. I do not think that the soya cake is any better than copra cake; and, if that is the case, then why not do what, other nations are doing, and put their own countries first, and then work with the foreigner on the same basis he works with us.

We all know, however, that Manchuria cum-Japan supplies the largest tonnage of soya bean, and also that the trading side of the balance sheet between the Empire and Japan is largely in the Empire’s favour. But surely something could be done to enable the Old Country to get this oil business down on to a different basis. If nothing else can be done, for the coconuts, then give them the same backing as is given to bacon, potatoes, etc., in England, and lay a definite programme of help for those Colonies which are still, for all practical purposes, an integral part of the British Isles.

Anyway, our friend with the 7,000 acres; owned by the Church will need to join the anti-tithe community now operating in England, and if he has such a nice large block of land in one area, then he is in a most difficult position, as the collector of tithes in England does not appear to have any soul, and cannot even read the Bible on such questions as benevolence.

We can leave that to the editors of the Financial Sections of some English news papers.

Miss A. I. Samuels, a young nurse from Ashburton, New Zealand, left Sydney for New Hebrides by the Morinda on Feb ruary 14. She is en route to the Melane sian' Mission station at Torgil, Banks; Islands.