Trochus

No Market For

Western Pacific Traders Find The Going Tough

WHILE pearl-shell is in sharp demand at high prices, it is most difficult to sell trochus-shell at any price— although the wbrld is desperately short of all the articles made from trochus.

The explanation seems to be that war destroyed the button-making industries of Japan and Czecho-Slovakia. and the de mand of the new button-making in dustry in United States hqs not yet caught up with the South Pacific supply.

Lack of ships to carry shell to the Ameri can market and the reviving industries in Europe and Japan, is another factor.

Here is a note from New Guinea: Buka always has been a happy hunting-ground for trochus-fish, and many of the trader planters around have amassed good-sized shipments—but only to be informed that this commodity is almost unsaleable at present. Rabaul reports no market for shell.

Neither is there much profit to be made now by traders from the old “Consols of the East.” Native sellers are asking (and receiving) 25/- a bag for dried copra.

What with bags, twine, etc., this brings the price to about £2l/5/- a ton. With 45 - freight, from Buka to Rabaul, this gives £23/10 landed at that port—and only good copra is bringing £2B at Rabaul. Smoke-dried copra, so report has it, is soon to be black-listed by official buyers.

Three native meetings held recently m the Buka Passage area decided to lay down a new wage scale for native labourers: £6 a month and keep, or 5/a day and keep. , „ The outlook is dismal. Eddie Ward s body may or may not be a-mouldering in Geneva; but his soul goes marching on in New Guinea.