New Caledonia?

What Is Wrong With

Leading French Journalist Brutally Names the All-Powerful Nickel Company

WHEN Air France made its first flight from Paris to Noumea, in 1949, the plane brought along a well known French journalist, Michel Gor dey.

He was not pleased with what he found in New Caledonia and, on his return, he wrote for the French news paper, France Soir, an article in which he described the economic sickness of the French Pacific colony, and quite bluntly attributed that sickness to the all-powerful Nickel Company.

Publication of the article caused a stir in colonial circles, and an angry re action by certain Noumea interests. The following is a literal translation of most of the article.

THROUGHOUT my stay in New Cale donia, I listened to the same re frain: “What we need badly here is some new blood —and some new capital.”

“Metropolitan France should make an effort to aid us,” I was told everywhere.

“But you yourselves, are you prepared to make an effort to help the metropoli tans who want to work and establish themselves here?” I asked in my turn.

At this question my interlocutors looked unhappy and started to explain the dif ficulties.

“Here’s a place almost deserted, with only 20,000 whites, 30,000 native Melan esians and some 12,000 Javanese and Indo-Chinese workers —who, in any case, are anxious to return to their home lands.” a high-up metropolitan official told me.

On most of the land cattle was being raised, to the extent of 4 to 5 hectares for each head of cattle. In France the position is reversed: there we have 4 or 5 beasts for each hectare of pasture. Here the colonists suffer a lack of markets.

So their costs are too high.

However, everything seems to grow here: Wheat, pineapples, cotton, coffee, maize. But the colonies vegetate in a sort of passive misery. They prefer to go hunting, or fishing, or to speculate on the mining concessions.

In reality, nobody wants to do any serious work. But if anybody should by chance roll up his sleeves and set to, a newcomer for example, they soon do all they can to dissuade him and to make

life impossible . . .

The day following, I was told the sad story of a Parisian who came out to Noumea three years ago, to install a tan nery in the island. He had some capital, and the necessary equipment and tech nical knowledge. He had believed that the Caledonian cattle stations, which up to then had exported their skins un treated would have been anxious to see them tanned in their own country. They let him set up his tannery; but, once his capital was engaged in the venture, they brought him to bankruptcy in a matter of three months. Having lost everything, he got employment in a nickel mine, and is now with some difficulty saving enough for his fare back to France.

IT it, however, not just bad luck that explains such failures. The reason— of which they only tell you under their breath —is quite different.

The reality is that powerful local in terests, knowingly and of set purpose, pre vent all innovation, all new initiative, all introduction of outside initiative in New

Caledonia. A company which possesses a virtual monopoly both of wholesale and retail trade in New Caledonia; which exercises at the same time the function of banking and to whom everybody looks for credit; which has in this fashion grabbed a good portion of the best land; and which owns the majority of shares in most of the mining enterprises of the

island—this Company controls not only the economic life of the place but also the New Caledonian political life.

“Why ever should such people encourage Caledonians to cultivate their land, to produce butter, cheese or wheat, when they can sell them tins of Australian preserves, or Californian wine or Ameri can wheat flour?” I was asked by a small

colonist, who explained to me the wheels within wheels of the feudal set-up.

"But at least you could vote against the nominees of this company in the General Council,” I said.

"Monsieur . . . don't you believe it!

Here, everybody knows everything, in cluding everything about you—and I need credit just the same as everybody else.”

New Caledonia, in 1949, is one of the world’s few countries whose inhabitants are not called on to pay any income tax.

But extremely heavy indirect taxes swell the island’s budget. These taxes apply to the importation of machinery that local industry must buy to modernise their in stallations.

The height of absurdity is that export taxes are imposed on the export of every ton of Caledonian chrome and nickel, the only exploitable riches of the island. The result is that Caledonian ores have to be sold at a price higher than that on the world market. It is because of this that France pays three times as much for nickel from Noumea as it does for Canadian nickel.

YET the New Caledonian concerns make big profits. These profits are in Pacific francs. And the Pacific franc is valued at 5.51 frs. metropolitan.

Why? No-one can say, but the result is that the cost of living is about three times higher in Noumea than in Paris.

Here again the company which controls the economic life of the island has im posed its own point of view. As it Im ports more than it exports, it has every thing to gain by paying for its imports with an over-valued currency. The fact that with this artificial* over-valuation New Caledonian colonists are no longer able profitably to sell their coffee, their copra—and even the chrome from certain small undertakings—means nothing to this company, which has all the say in

the matter through its own general councillors.

And what of the High Commissioner who represents Prance, the Mother Country, and the interests of the metro polis?

Like his 41 predecessors he has resigned himself to the policy of not interfering too much in local affairs. Every time that any Governor uses any sort of initiative in' New Caledonia, the local bigwigs, “whose arms are long enough to reach to Paris,” see to it that he gets the sack.

The present High Commissioner, M.

Pierre Cournarie, a former African ad ministrator whose career has covered French Equatorial and West Africa, is within a few years of being pensioned off.

He received me in a big, barte-walled office. A portrait of General de Gaulle only stressed its nudity.

And what is his opinion of the pros pects of New Caledonia as a place for colonisation by young Frenchmen?

“Perhaps there might be room for a dozen specialists, hardly more,” he re plied, in a sober voice. Because of the swollen value of the Pacific franc, new comers would need such resources of capital that they would find it better to stay where they were in France itself, where the land and possibility of making a living are less costly. However, New Caledonia may be said to need new blood.

BUT I did come across a newcomer, one evening, at the Pacific Hotel. This man, an American, had come to New Caledonia with a bulldozer. He had put it to use, shifting earth and finding traces of precious metals. At once he had taken up options on the areas he had pros pected. For a few hundred thousand dollars the affair had been launched.

“But what surprises me,” he added, “is the reaction of the inhabitants. Instead of looking for minerals themselves, in stead of joining their capital together to exploit the isle’s deposits, they write to me by the hundred to propose that I should buy their declarations. They lack all energy and initiative. There is some thing decadent about this island.”

The truth is that the only profitable mine in New Caledonia, which not only makes a real do of things but is organised on modern lines, also has an American manager. Before thinking of immediate profits, he went into the question of housing the workers, took care to see that their leisure time was not wasted, and in stalled a cinema and a co-operative store.

Within three years his production had quadrupled.

“It was good business,” he told me.

“The local inhabitants seem to think that the only means to exploit a mine is to work their labourers to death. But I em ploy other methods.”

As for the future of this paradoxical island, I may perhaps mention that ac cording to rumour there is petrol and uranium in New Caledonia. There, again, the Australians and Americans will un doubtedly have to employ all their private initiative before —after a hundred years of French colonisation —we shall have a modern and reliable geological survey of the island. It’s so far away, Noumea — quite as far away from Paris as from New York.

The High Commissioner of Western Samoa, Mr. G. R. Powles, and Mrs.

Powles were in Suva for a week in February. They arrived by flying boat on February 21 and intended to go on to Apia by the NZNAC Dakota two days later. The Dakota was, however, sub jected to a series of delays. She was first prevented by bad weather from landing at Norfolk Island and when she eventually reached Nadi she was again held up by storm. She left for Tonga, Samoa and the Cook Islands on March 1.