Even Isolated Mangaia Has

A Housing Problem

From Our Own Correspondent THE new “union rate” of seven shil lings a day per man. with meals provided by employer, has given a sharp check to the erection of new huts, etc., on Mangaia. Cook Is. Houses which once could be built for under ten pounds now cost three times that sum Mangaians are in a dilemma; European material, such as timber and roofing iron, is unobtainable, as also is cement, and the less-durable native thatch-and reed construction is now disproportion ately expensive.

Housing problems, upon a South Sea island thickly bushed, seem farcical; but so many expenses crop up, even in those cases where a villager is his own archi tect, carpenter and builder, that the job is no light one. All timber must be chopped, sawn and smoothed by hand, over a period of many weeks, during which other tasks are set aside.

The collecting of dry pandanus leaves is the lightest but not the least of the jobs connected with hut-building, and beside this there is the necessity for rope and twine, all made by hand from coco nut-fibre. If a working gang be hired at the rates quoted, the prospective builder could easily be £4O out of pocket at the conclusion of a job of any size— —a hut, say, suited to occupation by a European. Where a villager calls in his own clan to help him, their feeding, with tinned-goods at present prices, is no small item in the budget, even if he does not have to pay his helpers the “award” rate.