The Downtrodden
p. 23 · Read in the full issue
Native
(By A.M.A.)
FT is just shameful the way traders in the Solomon Islands exploit the poor unsagacious native.
With the present high price of trochus, the trader is simply making it a “welter.”
He goes to Malaita with his vessel, the only plant he needs (worth no more than about £800), and after a lot of soft talk persuades the all-believing, innocent salt water natives to go diving with him. He agrees to feed and give them the trifling sum of 18/- a tin.
The native also needs his plant, or equipment, so the trader, without so much as a pang of conscience, sells him, on paper, a pair of diving glasses for 1/-, when they have only cost him 10/6 a dozen. After that wilful act of profiteer ing, they start out.
Now, it is only the good divers who can get their three tins of shell a day— the rest, after working for at least three or four hours, can only manage one and a half to two tins. So, taking the aggregate, they make only about 36/- a day each. As a rule, after several weeks of this slavery, the divers at last rebel—not so much for the reason that they have only made about 9/- an hour for their diving time, but that the trader has introduced another <Df his grasping methods by shaking a “full” tin down to three-quarters, after they have neatly stacked the shells to overflowing, with all the cones up.
The trader takes them home again and pays them their hard-earned pittance, which, as a rule, works out about £l5 per diver.
For his shell, the trader receives at Makambo £B5 per ton. With 70 tins to the ton, this is equal to 24/- a tin. Out of this he pays 18/- to the natives, plus his expenses for the trip—fuel, insurance, food, crew’s wages, etc.—which, excluding depreciation on vessel and heavy wear and tear on boats, amounts to no more than £25, bringing the cost up to around 22/- a tin. The gloating trader, there fore, makes a clear profit of 2/- a tin— in other words, the native diver gets, in cluding his food, 90 per cent., and the trader takes the rest.
Yes, something really should be done about such glaring exploitation!