Economic Headaches For

Esi Natives

Strange Doings in The Copra Industry

Letter to the Editor BEFORE is it too late, it is desirable to set down some facts for the record. Prices throughout will be in Australian currency.

At the bottom of the depression, in the early 1930’5, bagged copra fell to the record “low” of 24/- per ton in the British Solomons. When it painfully climbed to £B, about four years later, though the price was still unpayable, planters and traders felt quite elated.

When it reached £l4 a ton, around 1937, they thought they were in Heaven.

Then a Big Firm stepped into native trading in the Western Solomons, with the announcement that it was so sorry at the poor prices which had been paid to the natives for so long, so “bring your copra along and we will pay you natives £l4 a ton —all the same white man.”

As Insensate competition had always limited the small traders’ profit to around £1 a ton (when it wasn’t a loss), and as all the traders sold their copra to that Big Firm, this method of competing against its own clients evoked intense bitterness among the outraged traders.

Both they and the Firm knew the impli cations of the position thus created: these things cannot be explained to natives, who at once drew the Inference that the rascally traders alone had been responsible for the wretched prices paid to them during the long depression years and after—and many uninformed whites held the same opinion, and sympathised with the natives accordingly.

The anger of the traders was not against the competition of the Big Firm as such, but against the manner in which it had initiated the new policy. It held all the cards, so there was no call to “put in the boot.” Later, copra re acted in price, and continued in a steady decline. The natives lived to see the day when the benevolent Big Firm, which had come to their “rescue” a few years pre viously, was paying around £3/5/- a ton for the major portion of the year prior to the evacuation.

And that is what happened under Big Firm Control. * ♦ * The time, but not the scene, has changed. It is now 1948, in the post war Solomons. Nearly eighteen years have elapsed since copra was 24/- per ton.

The Big Firm is absent from the scene.

Copra-buying is now a Government Mon opoly. The world price is now around £BO per ton. Solomons price is £4O.

Even the Big Firm will admit that it now has nothing to learn from Govern ment in covering itself against “contin gencies,” and making a thundering pro fit at the producers’ expense.

Once again a Saviour has appeared at the top of the market. (Curious how these benefactors turn up in Booms* never in Depressions.) Not so blatantly as the Big Firm did its stuff, but just as effectively, the Government has sold the native the idea that it alone is the creator of the present high prices, and that the trader, by implication, was re sponsible for the pre-war low ones. The poor blanky trader always seems, come hell or high water, to be cast for the villain of the piece.

It’s impossible to argue against a suc cess: and these things can no more be explained to natives than can the simple economics of business be explained to an unreasoning crowd of striking waterside workers. Which is one reason why the returning planter-trader in the Islands, and Missionaries also, find the natives—with important exceptions— neither grateful nor co-operative; a cocky, we-have-found-you - out-and- now-know all-the-answers attitude prevalent; and manifestations of the Marching Rule spirit in evidence in unexpected and un predictable places.

The natives are still unsatisfied, still highly critical (like they were in the last phase of Big Firm Control), because, in addition to receiving wholesale prices for retail lots, they are not receiving the

highly specialised, attentive service they received from the small traders.

And that is what has happened under Socialist Control.

I am, etc.,

Leslie F. Gill.

- Vella Lavella, BSI, 7/8/48.