Explain?

Will Somebody Please Explain?

By “Amel”

THROUGHOUT the Islands it is a well known fact that, where planters foregather, two topics of conversa tion hold the floor —namely, the perver sity of native labour, and the price of copra.

The vagaries of the latter are hard to understand. Before December, 1936, the price soared to £l4 and £l5 per ton, which meant comparative comfort for the planters. But this was too good to last. Steadily and relentlessly it fell again, until now it is £5/15/ per ton.

Can anyone give some good sound rea sons for this performance?

Various explanations, such as the European situation, the unstable condi tion of world affairs and the excess of substitutes lor copra products are dish ed up to us from time to time, but the unexplained fact remains that coconut and copra by-products are still being sold at precisely the same prices as when copra was £2O per ton.

It seems a trifle ridiculous, while cop ra fetches £5 15 per ton, desiccated co conut is sold at the rate of £ll2 per ten. And, as far as I know, margarine and cattle-food are maintaining their usual price levels.

A large amount of coconut oil prob ably goes into the manufacture of both household and toilet soaps. Consequent ly, according to the ruling price of cop ra, those commodities should be as cheap as dirt. But are they? Household soap, made in Suva, is indeed valuable stuff, being sold at approximately £47 per ton.

Why all the profit?

Perhaps coconut oil is one of the main ingredients of shaving soap? A 3oz. stick costs 1/9. Allow 9d for the bakelite con tainer, and figure out the rest for your self. All I can say is, the knowledge that they are lathering their faces with stuff worth about £597 per ton should cause men to weep tears of joy.

If the price of butter fluctuated to the same extent as the price of copra, dairy farmers would all go bankrupt and crazy in a week But it does not, so why can not the price of copra be the same? Why d9es not the low price of copra affect the high prices of the commodities manufac tured therefrom? Surely they should come down also!

It appears that the copra planters, as mere puppets of the powerful combines that rule world markets, can only sit tight, endeavour to evade the clutches of the merchants, hope for the best, and wonder whether, ultimately, their outlook will ever be any clearer than the mud it so closely resembles On May 30, a native of Mailu, Papua, was electrocuted, when he came in con tact with a wire fence which had become charged with current in an extraordinary

way. Water, overflowing from a gutter,

had reached an electric light switch.

This had destroyed the insulation, and the current had escaped to the iron walls and through an iron fence, to the wire.

The premises were properly wired, and there was the usual earth wire, and the galvanised iron fence was also partly buried in the earth; but the current took its course to the ground through the wire in the fence.