Who is Getting the Margin on Copra Prices?

Planters' Grievances In French

Oceania

(A Letter to the Editor)

YOUR Papeete correspondent frequently ventilates his pet grouch about the honky-tonks and the noise that tor ments him both day and night. We have yet to read something critical and con structive from his pen. So far it has only been cynical and “smart-Alecky.”

Perhaps he is the only one in the Group that misses the late Governor and hopes for his return. That wish is not shared by the rest of the population, who have had enough of dictatorship. That Governor fixed an arbitrary and starva tion price for copra and when the plant ers petitioned him to review the situa tion, dismissed them with: “You are get ting a good price.”

It was the same Governor, during the period of severe rationing of sugar, who permitted 80 per cent, of the local sugar crop to be made into rum. In conse quence, the Islands were cursed with more raw liquor than since the time of Cook.

The powers-that-be lacked imagination, else they would have made the rum buyers render up their sugar-tickets for the rum ration. But they got it both ways, and the temperate people suffered.

Glory be! The new Governor has lent a sympathetic ear to the copra producers’ plaint, and has already recommende.d and raised the price by £6 a ton, which is

now about £22. Even this is a pittance compared with what Mexico has been offering all through the war years, but the administration has persistently re fused permission to ship. Mexico’s offer was about £5O a ton.

It is pertinent to ask: Who got the dif ference between £l5 and £5O value, when copra was the most sought-after and pre cious product under the sun? Why have the heroic farmers, who have nourished the world through their blood, sweat and tears, been plundered and crucified? The reaction will not be long coming, when industry gets into its stride again and

produces a super-abundance of gadgets and geegaws, that the millions of slaves of the coconut are unable to buy because they have been mercilesslly plundered.

Your correspondent’s ear is not attuned to all this sound and fury.

It intrigued us somewhat to read in the “PIM” that desiccated coconut at Samoa was sold for £BO a ton. It would be in teresting to hear who gets the £6O dif ference between uopra and the desiccated nut. It should not be too difficult to find out—or is that also controlled by Unilever?

Now, friend editor, if your Eddie Ward still refuses you permission to visit the sacred land to the north, then take a trip to these beautiful but diabolical Islands; and we promise you an eye-full and earful, too. But in any event, you will be our welcome guest.

I am, etc.,

R. Scholtz.

Raiatea, 10/4/1946.