Readjustment

How Central Pacific Manages Without Copra

THE way in which the populations of the various Islands groups are re adjusting their economic conditions to meet the changes caused by the lack of a copra market has been described by visitors from the Islands to Australia.

Mr. Slocombe, from Tonga, says that, although the absence of a market for copra has caused considerable embarrass ment to Tongan planters, the position has been relieved by the development of a considerable market in New Zealand for Tongan bananas. He said that in one month, recently, 9,000 cases of Ton gan bananas reached the New Zealand market.

Mr. S. Bennett, who arrived recently in Australia from Rarotonga, says that the present paralysis of the copra indus try has had no more harmful effect in the Cook Islands than to give the natives a more leisurely life. The natives gen erally can live upon their plantations and gardens—although the absence of a copra market means that they have less money to spend. The Cook Islands, how ever, depend more for their income upon the sale of oranges to New Zealand than upon production of copra, and the orange trade still is good.

These examples are typical of the way the Pacific Territories are carrying on, despite the poor copra market. Papua has rubber and gold; New Guinea has gold, and some cocoa and coffee: New Caledonia has metals, coffee and cocoa; New Hebrides, coffee and cocoa; Fiji has sugar, gold and bananas; Samoa has cocoa and bananas; and so on. The only territories entirely dependent on copra are the Solomons, and the Gilbert and Ellice Colony.

The copra industry, while severely reduced, is by no means dead. Tens of thousands of tons are finding a market in Britain, Canada and Mexico.

Miss M. Sibil has completed a holiday in New Zealand and will return shortly to Malaita, British Solomon Islands, where she is connected with the work of the South Sea Evangelical Mission.