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Wairarapa Times-Age, 6 March 1939, Page 7

The vagaries of the copra market and the effect of the recent drop in the price of the commodity on the finances of the Methodist Church in the British Solomon Islands was mentioned by the Rev A. H. Scrivin, general secretary of the Foreign Mission Department of the New Zealand Methodist Church, at the annual conference of the Church in Christchurch. Mr Scrivin said that copra had dropped to £3 7s 6d a ton in the last year. In his experience, he had known copra quoted at £42 a ton, and it had once risen to more than £5O. This fall in the market was very disconcerting to those who were planning estimates on the basis of the state of the market, which was of vital importance to the native members of the Church. The Rev W. E. Silvester, a missionary on furlough from the Solomon Islands, told the conference that during the four years he had been in the islands copra had fallen from £22 to £3 7s 6d a ton.