A BANKRUPT PARADISE.

Press, Volume LIV, Issue 9812, 23 August 1897, Page 4

A BANKRUPT PARADISE.

Newspapers have recently been contending that following the annexation of the Hawaiian Islands by the United States Germany ought to seoure the Samoan group. The British Consular report from Apia for 1896 is just to hand, and discloses a number of facts to whioh it is advisable attention should be widely drawn at the present crisis in the history of Samoa. The South Pacific group would appear to answer to the description of a bankrupt paradise. Financial rain threatens the traders and storekeepers. The imports, returned at £60,830, show a decrease of £13,000 on the figures for 1835. There was a reduotion in the number _of vessels entered inwards, but British shipping, with thirty-nine vessels, again heads the list. Great Britain and her colonies still retain nearly two-thirds of the whole trade of Samoa; and the Consul observed that "with a little energy manufacturers in England could obtain the main trade of the Pacific," if they would take the trouble to send competent agents to visit the markets and ascertain the requirements of the various groups of islands, and make arrangements with the local traders. While imports from Germany and the United States have declined in company with British imports, it is significant that the axes used all over the Pacific are all of American make, as the English manufacturers refuse to make anything but a bluntheaded axe, that does not suit the native. In hardware and cutlery, again, the German product is fast supplanting that of British manufacture. Further, umbrellas have a large sale, as every native man and woman carries one, but they are all made in Germany, the natives considering the material of the English cotton umbrella too thin to be a sufficient protection. At present, the Consul says, the colonial trade is in the hands of firms in the colonies which are really German, and act as middlemen on German account. " Traders in these islands have for years dealt with such a middleman, believing they were obtaining British goods, and are now discovering that, by dealing direct with wholesale houses in England, they can not only be certain of obtaining British-manufactured gooila, bnt also procure better articles on much more favourable terms."