Too Many Trades Stores
p. 30 · Read in the full issue
Now
From Our Own Correspondent APIA, August 12.
RECENTLY a large number of Euro pean and Samoan traders have been fined in Apia High Court for pur chasing and taking delivery of cocobeans which were not of good quality. A num ber of Samoan producers have also been fined for offering inferior cocoabeans for sale.
These proscutions have been a neces sary warning against a growing tendency to accept or sell inferior products and thereby endanger the good reputation Samoan cocoabeans and Samoan copra have enjoyed in the past.
During the last few years many new trading stations have been opened up in all outside districts and particularly in the immediate neighbourhood of Apia.
The result has been keen competition among the traders, and a tendency to permit trade debts and later, in order to secure payment of these debts, to accept inferior quality copra and cocoa. In the suburbs of Apia there are sometimes half a dozen trading stations within an easy walk of five minutes, but the purchasing power of the Samoans living in the neigh bourhood would normally support two stores only.
This unhealthy state of affairs is cer tain to result in disaster for many of the traders later on due to unrecoverable native debts and lack of trade.
Mr. W. Bruce Ball, who was a District Officer in New Guinea when the Japs invaded New Guinea, and who retired on superannuation, is now a resident of Whitstable, Kent, England.