Vanilla Beans

How Boom Created Saturnalia of Spending in French Oceania

From Our Own Correspondent

Papeete, May 3.

\ CONTRIBUTORY element of no small importance in the economic recovery of French Oceania has been the rise in the price of vanilla beans.

Vanilla growing is well nigh as specu lative an undertaking as dabbling on the Stock Exchange or playing the numbers in a roulette game. There are times when it seems that every one in the world is eating vanilla ice cream and every cook “from Greenland’s icy mountains to India’s coral strand” is pouring bottles of vanilla essence into puddings and cake batter. It is then that vanilla beans be come worth their weight in gold.

But soon something happens, and it is all over. Tins of vanilla rushed to mar ket to supply the apparently limitless demand become suddenly as unsaleable as a herd of sick elephants. Then the stocks lie around in warehouses for months and even years before a buyer can be discovered.

On the crest of these booms the native grower rides high, wide and handsome.

He does not, as a rule, undertake the difficult and delicate operation of curing the beans. That task has been taken over by the Chinese. The planter sells the matured beans to the Chinese for cash.

The latter assume the risks of drying and curing, and the uncertainties of markets. The green vanilla is sold at auction (under Government supervision) at the headquarters of the chief of each district, on specified days in order to avoid conflict with sales in other dis tricts. Knowledge as to market prices is in the possession of the grower; compe tition is keen; and so the native usually gets all the traffic will bear.

The most spectacular, perhaps, of these booms came along in the hectic 1920’5.

United States merchants were living at that time in the hashish dream of the “New Era” when the world and all it contained were to ride on flowing beds of ease and bull markets until time should be no more. Vanilla, of course, was to be no exception. Advances of money were made to South Seas Chinese on the basis of things to come; tins of the precious substance were amassed in warehouses; and everyone concerned sat down to wait for prices to soar into the stratosphere.

The denouement —which came later (when public taste suddenly turned to Peach Melbas, cooks altered their recipes to contain Worcester sauce, paprika, and lemons; and it was belatedly discovered that crafty Hovas had been busy clearing and planting several counties of Mada gascar in vanilla) —was the beginning of many troubles in Tahiti, some of the consequences of which are visible at this day. But all that is apart from the pre sent story.

The principally relevant fact is that

the bulk of the advances had passed into the possession of native growers in the Leeward Archipelago (then, as now, the sites of the largest number of vanilla plantations in these islands) in payment for their crop of vanilla beans. The advent of so much money into hands un accustomed to receive it was followed by a saturnalia of spending which surpassed anything known in the experience of any then living and has become historic in the annals of the Colony.

The first phase was a series of gar gantuan banquets. Hecatomes of pigs, brigades of fowl, and mountains of other comestibles were sacrificed on the altar of these gustatory Olympics. There were giant trenchermen in those days who possessed vast capacities within the circle of their ample equators, and it usually took three days of feasting to fi.ll them up.

This writer once was present at a mid day session of one of these three day feasts. Behind a nearby spinney, the but chers were at work preparing for the morrow. Throughout the repast the air reverberated with shrieks and squeals and grunts and groans in a syncopated ensemble precisely like the sounds we hear nightly over the radio. We have since wondered if modern jazz did not have its origin at some hog barbacue in the deep south of the United States of America!

That phase ended, the second develop ment was a general hegira to that centre of golden dreams in the minds of all out islanders: the metropolis, Papeete.

Schooners from Raiatea, Hauhine, Bora Bora, and Tahaa sailed into Papeete Har bour crowded with humanity packed tightly on decks, in cabins, and even in the cargo holds. Soon the astonished residents beheld the spectacle of proces sions of automobiles full of natives, with the exalted mien and the independent air of the Man Who Broke The Bank At Monte Carlo, brandishing rolls of 100franc notes and calling lustily for new excitements. They did not have to call in vain.

The third and last phase was a philo sophic and satisfied return to the places whence they came. Those who had militant wives each took with them an armoire a glace (the chest of drawers with mir ror that every woman in Eastern Poly nesia is fired with ambition to possess, as it is the symbol of opulence and social eminence); some pieces of feminine dress godds; and, perhaps, a few cases of tin ned salmon.

The others bore away the shirts on their backs (usually hanging to their flap ends outside their trousers—as the fashion is); a demijohn of red wine to cheer them on their way; a consciousness of duty well performed; and nothing else.

The present rise in vanilla prices has not, as yet, attained boom proportions.

But it has stimulated trade in ukuleles, guitars, cigarettes, gramophone records, tinned meats, and miscellaneous girn cracks. The future is on the knees of the gods.