Italian Copra-Cutters

Walk Off Report on Hebrides Labour Experiment

From Our Own Correspondent

Santo, Mar. 20.

M. Charles Graziani’S In

teresting experiment of import ing Italian workers as copra cutters (reported in February PIM) appears, even at this early stage, to have failed.

A party of 20 Italians arrived in the New Hebrides at the end of January and were to have received from £2O to £2B Australian per month and to have been on a 3-years contract after which they could settle in the Condominium or return to Italy, The men are reported to have expressed dissatisfaction with the terms and conditions of iheir em ployment and those who have not already left to take more lucrative employment, have apparently re pudiated their contracts and walked off.

The majority will return to Italy as their return passages were guaranteed.

Something of the sort was ex pected locally as the positions they were to hold were, to put it mildly, lowly; and the pay, according to Santo standards, microscopic.—V.W. (Ed. Note: It appears then, that the New Hebrides’ acute labour problem is not to be solved in this way. In any more normal period any proposal to import Europeans to do work traditionally performed by native or Asiatic labour would have been ridiculed—but in these hard times even this experiment was watched with great interest, and hope. Without knowing the reasons as to why the; Italians can apparently repudiate their side of the bargain, while Mr. Graziani must honour his in the way of return fares, it is im possible to make adequate comment.

On arrival they were described as “well-dressed young men.” They must have had some idea of what was required of them before setting out on a journey that cost Mr.

Graziani £225 per head, but when face to face with plantation labour they obviously decided that there was no future in the Hebrides for gentlemen copra-cutters.)

Mr. and Mrs. Eric Willmann, left Brisbane at the end of March to go to Ulu, in the Duke of York Group,

off Rabaul. Mr. Willmann will take charge of the Methodist Mission plantation there.