Noumea Goes Modern I
p. 32 · Read in the full issue
From Our Own Correspondent
Noumea, Mar. 15.
BY arrangement with the Public Works Department, a certain amount of the sbcond-hand material which the Allied military authorities are passing on to the local administration, will be ob tainable by mining and building enter prises.
The Government also promises to lend out three second-hand tractors from the same source, for large-scale agricultural work.
To re-organise Noumea’s meat supply, which has hitherto arrived on the hoof, a number of new refrigeration trucks and refrigerators are to be bought in America.
Noumea’s bakers, all six of them, have united to modernise their bread-making, and have ordered two electric ovens from the United States. They have been hav ing difficulties with their Asiatic em ployees and hope by the new arrangement to cut down the number of workers con siderably, suppressing night-work and in troducing an eight-hour day.
Taken singly, these matters may seem of small importance, but added up they spell a change if not a revolution in a hitherto isolated community. One hopes that in time to come a larger French population will be built up here, and that the mechanic and the technician will be allowed to replace the under-paid coolie.