The Plight of Coconut
p. 59 · Read in the full issue
Planters
Letter to the Editor /COCONUT planters should give thanks vy to you for your continued advocacy on their behalf. The “P.1.M.” seems to be the only paper taking any interest in us.
Our situation grows steadily worse— it is approaching the stage when many of us will have to abandon our planta tions and try to get a wages job some where—if we can.
We who came here when Papua was a land of promise are at an age which, in modern life, is “too old”, and we are worn and weary with years of desperate efforts to keep going on low copra prices.
At the present price of copra, we cannot possibly carry on.
Unfortunately many of those who should represent us here have other in terests, so that copra is only a sideline to them. For instance, a man holding a store manager’s job, or other interests, is not greatly worried by the price of copra. The position is that we are simply “taking in each other’s washing” or living on the charity of our storekeepers and bankers who cannot carry us indefinitely.
With a widely scattered community, there is no cohesion or combining of forces, and people have reached a stage of numb despair.
In addition to our other troubles, our native labour is rapidly deteriorating, and work is done in a grudging manner, while orders are treated with insolence or worse. Our business firms are increas ing their freights, insurance and costs of all necessities; but they do not take into consideration the fact that copra, at time of writing, is unsaleable.
I, for one, would welcome the chance to return to Australia and take any form of employment, war work or otherwise, for the sake of a regular wage on which my wife and X could live. We had dreams that we could, in the evening of our days, retire and let younger ones carry on; but they are shattered by the indifference and inertia of our Governments.
I say emphatically that the only in dustry Papua was suitable for is being allowed to die slowly and with agony for those who have made their homes here and have been good citizens.
I am, etc.
W. Herbert Hughes.
Woodlark Is., Papua, 23/6/1940.