Dollar Shortage Hits

West Samoa

Prom Our Own Correspondent DOLLAR allocations to Western Samoa importers have again been severely cut for 1950.

Allocations have been made for the following categories of goods from hard currency areas:—timber, reinforcing steel, tyres and tubes, benzine and oils, vehicles for taxi purposes and general.

Only replacements of registered taxis will be allowed and a bond to the value of the car has to be deposited to ensure that the car will not be disposed of for private purposes within four years of first regis tration.

Importations from soft currency areas will not be restricted.

It is expected that USA and Canadian goods, particularly foodstuffs, will prac tically disappear from the shelves of Apia stores and may be replaced by Australian goods.

Two lines which will be hard to re place, however, are American cigarettes and Canadian tinned fish which have always enjoyed popular favour in the Territory.

Editorial Note

WESTERN SAMOA is late in joining those countries where canned sal mon and Luckies are unknown!

American cigarettes are now a dim war time memory; canned salmon disap peared from Australasian markets in 1942 and seems unlikely to return until someone has found a way out of the dol lar maze. It gave the cynics cause for mirth, however, when last year red sal mon, canned by Red Russia, was imported into Australia and sold readily. The Commonwealth is promised more of this in 1950 —but must not import it from her sister Dominion, Canada, or from USA.

It is interesting to reflect that the present Australian generation is growing up knowing nothing of two of the com monest foods of pre-war days—salmon and rice. Although the prohibition on rice has probably prevented many nursery rice-pudding inhibitions, it has now been pushed into • the luxury class—unobtain able unless you know a Chinese sea man or have a friend with blood-pressure (and that necessary adjunct to successful living in a bureaucratic age—a Doctor’s Certificate).

There are, of course, ways and means.

Recently a group of Australians were dis cussing cream, which is also banned from the ordinary citizen’s diet.

“I get cream now, Wednesdays and Saturdays,” said Mrs. P.

“How?” asked her friends, “Oh, Mr. Jones, three doors down the street, has in ulcer. (And a Doctor’s Certificate). Mrs. Brown gets it Mondays and Thursdays and Mrs. Smith the other days.”

“What about the ulcer—when does it get it?” she was asked.

“Oh him,” was the reply, “he’s had cream.”