COPRA SITUATION DESPERATE

Evening Post, Volume CXI, Issue 69, 23 March 1931, Page 3

COPRA SITUATION DESPERATE

Although the hurricane did not devastate Taviuni, au island of the Fiji group, Mr. J. Harper, a planter of thirty years' experience, who arrived by the Tofua'at Auckland last week, aaid that the copra situation was desperate (reports the "Auckland Star"). He attributed the low prices to the advent of the whaling industry in the Ross Sea. "Fortunately," he said, "Taviuni, which is the garden of the Pacific, escaped from the effects of the cyclone. I was coming down from the island in a schooner at the time, my plantation being some 150 miles from Suva. Wo got a cerain amount of wind, but nothing to speak about. Floods were the greatest trouble. We had. had a very dry year, and the heavy rain and cyclone came at the same time. The loss of life was mostly confined to the Indian section of the community. In 1892 I happened to bo in Mauritius; which is in the same hurricane belt, and on that occasion 2000 Indians were killed. They were employed mostly on the sugar "plantations. I have been growing copra in the Fiji Islands since 1904, and have come to the conclusion that the Fijians will not give a fair day's work. They have been far too well treated, and have made up their minds not to work too hard. They think that a day's work consists of toiling from about seven in the morning until ten or half-past. They receive £.1 a week, this including food and shelter. The Indians receive 2s (3d per day, but they are not easy to obtain. They prefer knocking about Suva to working on the copra plantations."