Forty Years On The Pacific/Copra, Sugar, and Other Products
THE staple product of the South Sea Islands is copra. Probably not one person in four knows what it is. First of all, then, let me explain that copra is the dried flesh of the cocoanut. This product yields an oil which enters very largely into the manufacture of soap. It is also used in the preparation of vegetable butter for cooking, and, owing to the increasing scarcity of animal fats, the demand is a very large and growing one. During the Great War, copra was exported in huge quantities to make glycerine for munitions. Another product, used by confectioners, is known as desiccated cocoanut. Even the residue, or cake left after the extraction of the oil, is made into a nutritious cattle food. By feeding a cow a portion daily, I have known an increase of two pounds of butter weekly.
The soap-making and vegetable butter traders, prior to the war, were the most important consumers of cocoanut products.
The husk of the cocoanut also is a source of considerable profit to the planter. The fiber is made into mats and other articles. The refuse that then remains makes an excellent fuel, giving out a great heat, and an oven has been invented in which it can be employed most economically.
Recently it was discovered that cocoanut shells could be used in the making of gas-masks for the soldiers at the front, as they contained a high percentage of charcoal, which was an antidote for the poisonous gases.
The cocoanut trees start to bear in four or five years in the Western Pacific and in seven or eight years in the Eastern Pacific, and the nuts ripen throughout the year. Copra is sold by weight, 6,500 nuts generally going to the ton, which, at $100 a ton, will return $45 an acre annually. These were pre-war prices.
The plantations, notably in the New Hebrides, suffer from various pests, such as rhinocerous beetles, bats, flying foxes and snakes. The last-named knock off the blossoms while wriggling through the limbs trying to catch birds. A fly also attacks the leaves of the tree, which it dries up, causing the fruit to fall off before fully grown. But the most serious enemy to the cocoanut is the land crab, which is from one to two feet long, and weighs from three to five pounds, possessing strength enough to break a man's wrist. Land crabs climb the tree, cut off the nuts and carry them often great distances to their .holes under rocks, or in hollow trees. They strip the fiber off the nut, crush the shell at the sprouting end and extract the meat.
The cocoanut-oil trade was a steady one in the islands from the earliest period of European barterings. The manufacture of the oil was simple. The flesh of the nut, broken into small pieces, was deposited in a trench or canoe and allowed to decompose, whereupon the oil, of course, very impure, was collected. Where rainfall was heavy, it was dried or smoked in huts. This was in the very early days. Then the copra trade disclosed the fact that the white man's process was a better one. The flesh is cut in strips, two or three inches long, and laid on reed platforms to dry, care being taken not to allow rain to spoil the operation. Then it is bagged and sent to oil mills in Sydney, San Francisco and Europe. The Sunlight Works of Lever Brothers, in Sydney, are the largest oil-crushing works south of the equator.
Copra is at times wrongly blamed for loss of ships by fire, attributed to spontaneous combustion. Copra of itself will not ignite from this cause, but if the jute bags used by the shippers get wet, spontaneous combustion may occur and the reason be wrongly attributed to the copra. I know of one case where a ship with six thousand tons of cargo was destroyed by fire. She had loaded copra at a port en route and to this the fire was blamed. Shipping men in San Francisco claim that the copra had been stored in a hold close to coal bunkers and from this source had caught fire.
As copra (next to sugar) is the most important product of the Pacific islands, and fluctuations are frequent and wide, it is difficult to quote a price that would be a guide to all the islands.
London, as in most cases, controls the copra market, but San Francisco is the principal market at present, owing to the transport facilities, and governs the price of Pacific islands copra, but the price to the grower depends largely on the cost of freight. For instance, from the Samoan Islands (1918) the freight was 2 cents per pound, but it is difficult to quote a rate that would cover the other groups of the Pacific, owing to scarcity of labor and transportation.
In March, 1918, the price of copra in San Francisco was 8 1/2 cents a pound, in March, 1919, it was 4 1/2 cents. Two months later, the price rose again to 8Vi> cents a pound, and cost of freight from the Samoan Islands is about 1 1/4 cents a pound.
There are four primary grades of copra, viz.: Machinedried, Sundried, Smokedried and Mixed; the latter being half sun and half smoke. The difference in the different grades is about % cent per pound.
In July, 1919, copra was $280 a ton (about 12 cents a pound) in London. Owing to the requirements of Great Britain an embargo was again placed on shipments of copra from Australia to non-British countries.
For many years sandalwood gave the island traders best results for their labor, but the supply has become exhausted. The natives grind the sandalwood and use it for scenting the cocoanut oil with which they paint their bodies. Commercially, it is used in the manufacture of furniture, and it is also exported to China, where it is used for temple incense.
Rubber, cocoa and coffee are successfully grown in the Samoan and Tongan Islands, while in Fiji the most important planting industry is sugar. It may be said to be the mainstay of the group, and therefore it deserves almost as full a reference as I have made to copra. Fiji is to be numbered among the finest sugar-producing countries in the world, with an annual output of about 110,000 tons. The Colonial Sugar Refining Company of Sydney was the first to embark on the industry on a large scale, though others had started in a smaller way before them. In 1917 there were over 7,000 men engaged, while the mills, in which the cane from nearly 40,000 acres is crushed, are as scientifically equipped as those in any other part of the world.
In the early days, the company was confronted with many difficulties. The principal trouble was that of suitable labor. The native Fijians, who are not overfond of work, were supplanted first by Tongans, then by Solomon Islanders, and as a last resource, by coolies from East India, who proved to be the most satisfactory.
The actual process of extracting the juice from the cane, and manufacturing therefrom the raw sugar, which is sent to Australia or New Zealand to be refined, and made into the article familiar to all, calls for a high degree of skill in order that the best and most profitable results may be obtained. The Colonial Sugar Company is the principal concern in Fiji, but there are others also, including the Vancouver-Fiji Company, owned by the late Mr. Rogers, a prominent resident of British Columbia. This is a fine mill, and is owned by the estates of the Melbourne Trust. Of course, Fiji is not the only place in the islands where sugar is extensively grown. In the Hawaiian Islands are some of the finest plantations, with splendidly equipped mills that rank among the best in the world.
Very good tea is grown in Fiji, and other products are rice, tobacco, and, of course, bananas, pineapples, which one can buy in Suva for three-pence apiece, and other fruits that find a ready market in New Zealand and Australia.
Among the tropical fruit, the pawpaw, papai or mamie apple, is very palatable, and possesses medicinal qualities. Pepsin is obtained from the seed inside by extraction, and by tapping the tree in the same manner as is done in maple-trees in America to obtain sap to boil into maple sugar. A hole is bored into the bark of the tree and from this small hole drops of a gummy liquid will run into a vessel. It is then poured onto sheets of glass or other smooth surface, and allowed to remain until it hardens, when it is stripped off and grated into a fine powder. Even the leaves possess digestive properties, as one will find by wrapping chops or steaks between them and allowing them to remain over-night. Boarding-houses in the islands always carry a supply. Poultry hung among the limbs of the tree becomes quite tender. In Jamaica half a pawpaw is thrown into a pot of boiling meat, to make it tender.