Copra Industry and the "Margarine Trust"

ALL copra producers in the Pacific will be interested in the charges made in the House of Commons by Labour members on April 2, when they attacked the food policy of the British Government. They insisted that the price-fixing methods adopted had reduced rationing to a farce, and they indicated, moreover, that wholesale interests dominated the commodities departments of the Food Ministry.

Mr. J. Morgan, a Labour member, in giving facts and figures to support these charges against the Govern ment, made the following statement (according to Australian Associated Press): “The margarine trust mono polise the margarine branch of the Department of Food* and the mar garine trust was endeavouring to keep up the price of butter, while the sales of margarine had doubled”.

There we have direct confirmation of something that had been suspected for several months by Australians in terested in, the copra industry. It has been pointed out, as an extraordinary thing, that while primary producers of all other classes have at least found their products in profitable de mand as a result of the war, the copra price fixed by the Department of Food, under the British Govern ment, leaves copra producers worse off than they were before the war.

In this journal, in recent issues, we expressed the opinion that the Uni lever combine had something to do with it; and, now, we have direct con firmation of our suspicion.

The British Government’s idea of effectively conducting the war and, as it has expressed it, “protecting the masses of people against exploitation”, is to take control of all vital indus tries, and then permit bureaucratic control of those industries by com mittees nominated by the rings and combines which formerly were trying to dominate them. Under pre-war conditions the rings and combines were having a pretty good time; under war conditions, they are given almost absolute power.

And yet the British masses are be ing urged, by blind leaders of the British nation, to come along volun tarily and fight for freedom and de mocracy.

These circumstances only give sub stance to the thought which is being expressed by intelligent people with increasing frequency—namely, that if it is necessary to have this war, in order to break the gangster methods of the Totalitarian State, it is equally necessary that democracy, at an early date, shall also face up to a far more sinister enemy—namely, the power of the international trusts and combines.

The copra industry of the world is

in the grip of one of the most brutal and ruthless of these; but there are scores of others, and neither world peace nor social justice is possible while they keep the industrial masses practically on the breadline, and limit the activities and enterprise of every individual, whether he be trader or manufacturer or agriculturist.

The majority of industries are get ting a raw deal, these days. None is being treated more callously than the copra industry. There is so much that could be done, simply and easily, to help the planters. But we are getting just what we might expect from the teams of babbling politicians who direct our Governments—that is, precisely nothing. They are only straw men, anyway—jerked one way, to-day, by the departmental bureau crats, and another way, to-morrow, by the unseen hands of international trading, transport and money com bines. It is a depressing prospect.