"Copra-Economy"?

Has Polynesia A Future Without A

South Pacific Conditions as They Appear to Robert Dean Frisbie

UNLESS there is some unforeseen improvement in shipping facilities and the manufacture of civilian goods, at the end of World War II the entire South Pacific area will require a virtually complete restocking of con sumers’ goods, equipment, and con struction material.

The United States will probably be the country best equipped to manufacture and transport these goods, and she may be expected to do so if import restrictions do not prohibit trade. Trade restrictions may be anticipated, however—England, Australia, New Zealand, and India can not be asked to allow their own indus tries to suffer for the benefit of Ameri can exporters.

At the present time, most of'the tex tiles imported into the South-eastern Pacific come from India. These goods are often unsatisfactory in quality and are always exorbitant in price. Import ers state that the Indian manufacturers are bleeding the market for all it will stand; and the consumers, who are pay ing from 600 to 800 per cent, more for textiles than they did before the war, are losing patience. Perhaps India, through her own nearsightedness, is building up a mushroom trade that will collapse with the coming of peace: she is existing at present on a high-profit economy, and she may not be able to re organise her industry on a basis of smaller profits. Also, she may suffer from the resentment of her former customers.

It is deplorable that many of the

primitive and semi-primitive people in the South Pacific are recalling that Japan, in fcre-war years, supplied textile goods which were retailed at from six pence to ninepence a yard, and which were identical if not superior to the goods now supplied by India and retailed at from four to six shilling a yard.

Furthermore, there are persistent rum ours that the Japanese in occupied ter ritories are supplying the natives with good-quality merchandise at very low prices—probably in anticipation of many of the islands being retaken by the United Nations, and with an idea of educating the people to a pro-Japanese frame of mind.

The Europeans in the South Pacific do • not enter largely into this picture. They compose a very small minority that obtains its personal goods from England and America. These Europeans look upon the high price of Indian textiles as a temporary and unavoidable evil in the same way as they formerly looked upon the low price of Japanese textiles as a temporary, though not unavoidable, evil. But the native people understand only that a pound note will now buy four or five yards of shoddy print, while formerly it bought as much as 40 yards.

Though these Polynesians never heard of inflation, they know that their money is not worth as much as formerly.

WE who live in the South Pacific are naturally concerned about the economic future of this area. Even the optimists among us admit that the

outlook is gloomy. Before the war copra, on many of the islands, was not worth making. Few of the rubber plantations showed a profit. Cocoa was a risky gamble. Vanilla was profitable only to the small growers who tended their own vines. Pearl-shell was virtually unsale able. Now we wonder if, when munitions factories are closed down, there will be any sale whatsoever for copra. Will nat ural rubber find a market in countries overstocked with synthetic rubber? Will cocoa fall to its pre-war price? Will synthetic vanilla and nacre again force natural vanilla and pearl-shell out of the market?

If the South Pacific stores and ware houses are to be restocked, if the worn out trucks and automobiles are to be replaced, and equipment and construc tion material supplied, then a use must first be found for the produce which the South Pacific people produce.

To-day, the planters of the South Pacific area are receiving excellent prices for their produce. Copra is now bought, on the more accessible islands, for about £l4 (sterling) a ton, while the market price in Sydney, at this writing, is £24 Australian. This is approximately 300 per cent, higher than the pre-war price. Cocoa, Samoa’s most important produce, is now quoted in Australia at £BO (Australian) a ton, while the pre-war price was seldom half that amount.

Vanilla, pearl-shell, tortoise-shell, and rubber have jumped to phenomenal prices.

On the other hand, there has been no improvement in the market for fruit, and this is an important point, because it affects directly the small native growers, who are in the majority in these islands.

The above remarks would suggest that no one, except fruit-growers, should com plain of the high price of consumers’ goods, because prices obtained for pro duce have risen to a parallel degree.

This is not true. If accumulating

inflated currency can be called profiting, then the only ones who have profited in this area are the big growers, who are almost entirely European and who are only a handful among many. The natives in this area depend for their livelihood on labor on the big plantations to a small extent, but mainly on the produce from very small acreages. Very few of them have plantations that will produce more than enough food for their own household use. There are a few excep tions, such as certain small acreages of tomatoes in the Central Pacific, which are bringing their growers large profits at the present time, small plantings of vanilla in the Eastern Pacific, and the scattering of rubber trees in the western area. This does not alter the picture— the shipments from small planters are mostly fruit, and fruit has not increased in price locally. fTTHERE is» of course, a brighter side to X the picture. No matter what form future world economy takes, the native people of the South Pacific will always have an abundance of food, satis factory shelter, and sufficient clothing.

Even on the barren atolls, where the stranger sees only sand and coconut trees, people lived well for hundreds of years before the coming of Europeans; and even if they were cut off entirely from the outside world they would live well—albeit they might hanker for a cup of tea or a pipe of tobacco.

Many old residents of the South Paci fio believe the natives would be better off if they were deprived of the so-called amenities of civilisation. The mission aries. traders, and planters throw up their hands in horror at such a sugges tion. but it must be remembered that they have selfish motives for wishing to coat the people with a thin veneer of osuedo-civilisation. However, it is point less to speculate on whether or not the natives would benefit bv a return to can nibalism, pagan religion, and primitive material culture.

No such change will take place so long as they have copra and rubber to ex change for manufactured goods. When copra and rubber are no longer wanted, then these Pacific peoples’ reversion to a primitive state appears to me to be inevitable.