SAMOAN ADMINISTRATION.

Auckland Star, Volume LIII, Issue 194, 17 August 1922, Page 5

SAMOAN ADMINISTRATION.

RECENT CRITICISM REFUTED. TTTE PLANTATIONS' OUTPUT UNDER GOVERNMENT CONTROL. A Sydney cable last month criticised the Samoan Administration for the way in which it was dealing with the former German plantations, alleging, in effect, that the administration could not secure as good results- from the aopropriated estates as their former German owners. Reference to this matter was made this morning by Mr. J. D. Gray, the Undcr-Secretarv of External AtFairs, who returned to the Dominion yesterday from the Islands. He declared that these ! estates were now producing a very high grade of coconut and cocoa at the plantations, which easily held their own on the London market. Nothing was further from the truth than the statement emanating from Sydney and published in the New Zealand Press. With fifty labourers less than worked by the Germans, there would be a record output this year. It would be at least 300 tons in excess of any ycar"s output between : 1901 and Ifll4." The estates were not: only managed better, but were administered with fewer labourers and at less I expense, and the result was that they j were producing more than in pre-war days. Such a statement as the one inspired from Sydney would have little j effect when the facts were so clearly in favour of the administration.