PROFITEERING IN JAVA

Southland Times, Issue 18856, 23 June 1920, Page 2

PROFITEERING IN JAVA

FORTUNES MADE IN A DAY. “Batavia is a carnival of profiteering wealth,’’ says Mr Byron Brown, director of Derbyshire* (N.Z.), Ltd., in a letter recently sent by him to his firm in Wellington. “Fortunes,” he adds, “are made in a day. One sugar company, with a capital of one million, made six millions clear profit last year. Sugar that was sold at 2d two years ago is now Is, and it costs no more to produce. The natives who do the work get about Is per day and find themselves. Java is a study in economics. There are no laws except those made in Holland, and nobody minds except the natives, who will rise in their thirty-seven millions some day and deal it out to the sixty thousand Europeans who are now robbing them. “There’s no business to be done in Java until prices come down. The islands are a welter of wealth to a few Europeans and the many Chinese. The latter are wonderful business men. They are bankers, merchants, stock-brokers, land agents, and bull marketriggers. Their wealth is enormous, and they lire holding stocks of everything with a view of increased prices. They have vast stores bursting with the products of the land, and the American buyers are sitting on their doorsteps o.Tering fabulous prices, which the Chinese won't accept. “The buyers arc outbidding each other, and the Chinese holder smiles blandly, but ret uses to sell. Why should he rig the market when the buyers are doing it for him V’