QUEER SIDE OF THINGS.

Hauraki Plains Gazette, Volume XXXIV, Issue 4556, 27 April 1923, Page 1

QUEER SIDE OF THINGS.

DAIRYING IN FIJI. | (By “Septimus.”} You have no doubt heard about the j attempts to boost the dairying indus- i try in Fiji. In fact, you can’t help > hearing all about it—or, rather, all that the people of Fiji want you tc hear about it—because the Auckland | papers have “special" correspondents -—extra special, I’d call ’em —who hand in the boost because they know the subs, and editors there are “in the dark.” Now, I love Fiji—its greenness, its warmth,, its coral reefs and palin-fringed beaches —but I also love New Zealand. I’ll admit thru the attractiveness of Fiji has proved irresistible—but its “dairying industry” (industry, mark you) is a farce, pure and simple. Apart from producing butter of a kind at two and something i a pound for a certain class of local consumption, there never will be’ a dairying industry here. You will be told that there will, of course, and the writers will say., (as a Suva paper did a few days ago) ‘ look at -the Tailevu Dairy Scheme.” Yes, just so, you should look at it,; examine it minutely;, probe into the depths of the thing—and then forget it. The tragedy of it is that it’s a returned soldiers’ scheme —and the most of them wish they could return the land. You may say, you who have read the glowing accounts written by the “special correspondents,” why isn’t it a success? Well, can a' tropical country produce butter and cheese to equal the New Zealand product ? Of course it can’t. And do all animals—bar the human ones that take a holiday eveiy few years to thicken their blood— improve or degenerate ? Degenerate,, of course. Half-bred Indian cattle thrive, and produce sturdy working bullocks. ■But milkers— dairy cows such, as there are on the Hauraki Plains never. It absolutely can’t be done—but. there’s a lot. of men in Fiji who own land that they badly wish to sei], and —oh -well, you can imagine the rest. “Da.iry land can be had here for £2O an acre,” said one man to me. “Good reads,” says I. “Oh, not exactly, but —.” “But what,” says I. “But you couldn’t get land like it in New Zealand,” he replied. “That so,” says I v American-like. And in my mind, as I watched free Indians, knee-deep in mud planting rice, and sweating under a tropical sun, I said to myself, “God help the New Zealander who listens to “special correspondents” and gives up dairying in New Zealand to experiment in Fiji. Remember these facts : No first-class butter to compare with the New Zealand product has ever been produced in Fiji, therefore there could be no payable export trade; no herd of cows can remain very, long without degenerating unless the best blood is constantly being' introduced; no Hindu labour can so far be trained as milkers ; no white man should de physical work in the field alongside a coloured man ; no man with small capital can take up land here and get out when his money’s gone—it costs too much. And as -there are no jobs here now, or few, for white men, what would he do. As it is, I often see white men doing work that should be done by the imported labour —shovelling coal, with a Hindu on one side of the heap and himself on the other. The brotherhood of man if you will—and the surest road to the downfall of the Empire. There are too many already who have gone down —down to lower depths than is ever possible in a white man’s country. So. even if you have a life-long mortgage on your Plains section if it be a million pounds—don’t come to Fiji with the intention of dairying. It’s a lovely country—y love every inch of it —but not for dairying. That’s only a hair-brained scheme, a horrible nightmare. It might lessen the • “big" man’s overdraft —but, it wouldn’t produce butter fat. There’s no intention that it should —and that is “the truth and nothing but the truth.” There are many avenues through which New Zealand capital could profitably be employed in Fiji, such as in the development of secondary industries, but ' tiie time foi’ that is hardly yet ripe. New Zealand merchants could, however, if they were more alive, do far more trade with Fiji. The business man of Fiji does not make a success of his secondary industries. He doesn’t know how. There is a soap factory in the islands, yet. almost every decent house in Suva uses “Lifebuoy”—and the makers of that soap get their copra from islands, ship it to Sydney,, and turn the soap out cheaper with white labour. They don’t understand the advantage of ’ up-to-date machinery in Fiji; and cultivation by modern methods is almost unknown. The planter has allowed his cocoanut trees to grow, and his labour to pick them up—and when he enters business he conducts, it in the same way. There is room for capital here, and splendid opportunities for new industries—but they must be run by outsiders. Fiji is neglected for want of new blood. The dairying bubble is a joke.