Rise In Copra Price

Encourages Thefts of Plantation Nuts in B.S.I.

From Our Own Correspondent

Ttulagi, Feb. 14.

RADERS in the Solomons have been paying up to and even over £1 a bag for copra. As a consequence, where vil lages are handy to plantations or areas where constant oversight is not possible, natives have been suspected of augment ing their own copra with purloined pro duce from estates. A few months ago they would not bother picking up nuts or cleaning their own groves.

A few successful prosecutions, if they could be managed, would nip this ten dency to steal nuts in the bud.

One plantation owner has living on his boundary a native of slave descent, who is not entitled to own coconut trees.

This native has lately sold several parcels of copra, of about 2000 nuts at a time, to Chinese traders. The trader is not to blame, for he does not know whether or not a native has trees. Even so, natives who do not possess trees fre quently cook for others (in which case the owner of the trees can bear witness) on shares or other arrangements; but the plantation alongside is always corres pondingly short of output.

Natives are the first to complain if a plantation labourer or any unauthorised native gets away wPh so much as one nut. Howei cr, natives will not “pimp” on one of their own clan, even of slave descent, and convictions are hard to get.

The penalty should be correspondingly severe. When a native owning no grove sells copra, but cannot state where he got it from, he should be under suspicion, to say the least.