Quiet Under This Exploitation?
pp. 7-8 · Read in the full issue
How Long Will Copra-Producers Sit Quiet Under This Exploitation?
far-reaching dislocation of the A commerce of Pacific Territories, caused by the war, serves to emphasise the defencelessness of Pacific Islands producers, and to direct attention to the need for a review and a remedy.
The outstanding factor of the situa tion, of course, is the position of the copra market. Before war broke out the high-grade copra price was ap proximately £lO/12/6 per ton, c.i.f., London. To-day, it is fixed by the British and French Governments at £l3/5/- per ton, c.i.f. London. Al though most primary producers throughout the world have received benefit from a rise in their respective commodities to offset higher costs, and leave something over, there has been nothing for the copra producer.
The whole of the rise in the price of his product has been absorbed by higher freight and marketing costs.
There is nothing to cover higher pro duction costs. Freight is higher by £2/7/6 per ton. Bags have doubled in price; rice is 30 per cent, higher; lap laps are 30 per cent, higher in cost— and so on.
In actual fact, the copra producer to-day is worse off than he was just before the war; and, then, he was not enjoying even a bread-and-butter existence. He was obtaining enough
profit from his produce to pay for bread; but there was mighty little butter, and no jam. European men and women do not face the rigours, discomforts and isolation of life in the Pacific territories for so miser able a reward.
The time certainly has come for copra - producers throughout the Pacific Territories to ask themselves seriously whether there is any future in the industry. Unless copra is to return them at least £2 to £3 per ton more profit than it has done in the past two years, copra production in the South Sea Territories will become little more than a sideline for indus trious natives. Coconut planting as an industry for Europeans will dis appear.
IS such a development inevitable?
What is the cause of this pre vailing low price for copra? Is it really due to the fact that that vast industrial world which needs a soft vegetable oil now may be catered for by new commodities, such as cotton seed oil, soya bean oil, whale oil, and various other oils which can be puri fied and by new processes, and which apparently are often in vast over-supply? Or is the present condition of the coconut-oil industry
the result of its being in the grip of one of the world’s largest, greediest, and most ruthless combines —namely, Unilever, Ltd.?
It is impossible to escape the sus picion that the coconut Industry is oeing bled white by the combine. We know that the combine is faultlessly organised, that it is international in character, that it is so powerful that it snaps its fingers at Governments and crushes all opposition, that its profits are colossal. It was only the other day that newspaper readers were informed that the highest paid man in the United States in 1938, according to a Treasury statement, was Mr. F. Countway, president of Lever Bros., whose income in that year was 469,000 dollars (or, in Aus tralian money, £146,562). To oppose this commercial octopus the coconut growers have nothing—only a world wide industry, spread out over scores of tropical countries, with very little association, and not an ounce of co-operation in the whole of it.
THE coconut industry throughout the world markets about 1,500,000 tons of copra per annum. If the pro ducers of only two-thirds of this, or even half of it, could be lined up to face the combine, what a different tale there would be! Unilever, Ltd., then might not be able to make £30,000,000 profit in a year, and the wretched Mr. Countway might have to do with less than £146,000 per
annum. But at least a few thousand European planters, now hanging on gnmiy in unhealthy tropical coun tries, would get something more than a bare living out of their enterprise.
Commentators shake their heads gloomily—they say it would be im possible to organise the producers of this world-wiae industry. Why should it be impossible? It would be found that enough copra producers to con trol two-thirds of the world’s pro duction are under three flags—under the British Colonial flag, under the Dutch flag in the East Indies, and under the American flag in the Philippine Islands. It might even be possible for the Dutch and the British to take action independently of the Philippines, as they have done be fore, to save other great industries.
It is up to the Governments con cerned to try to do something. Every young British man to-day, through out the world, is being invited to take up arms for Democracy. His duty is clear. But if there is a responsibility upon the individual citizen to fight for Democracy, there equally is upon our Governments the responsibility to free our democratic system from the monstrous parasitical growths, in the shape of trusts and combines, that have grown up under its shelter in the past few decades. The life-blood of commerce and industry in our de mocratic countries has been freedom of individual enterprise; but the trusts and combines are slowly and steadily murdering the individual trader and producer. There is no clearer example of this than the Unilever combine and the coconut industry.
Shall we surrender to this merci less commercial monster without a fight? There is one thing that can be done immediately. Coconut planters everywhere should call upon iheir local Administration to make to the British Government, by whatever channel is available or desirable, the most urgent representations regard ing that fixed copra price. That sum of £l3/5/- per ton c.i.f. London may represent a very beautiful picture so far as Unilever is concerned—we may be sure that Unilever had a lot to do with it—but to the copra producers throughout the South Seas it means simply distress, starvation and bank ruptcy.
Sir Harry Luke, in Suva; Sir Walter McNicoll, in Rabaul; Sir Hubert Murray, in Port Moresby—these are three men administering great tropi cal territories where the coconut in dustry is of first importance—surely it is right and proper that all the facts and figures should be placed before them, so that they make re presentations in the proper quarter.
It is no use the copra-producer sitting at home and moaning. He is being unjustly and cruelly exploited, and he is up against a very tough proposition. But that is all the more reason why he should get out and fight—and the best way to start the fight is to howl in chorus until the Governments are forced to take some notiQe of the noise.