Native Welfare in the Southwest Pacific Islands

THERE IS LIKELY to be increasing public interest after the war in the islands of the Southwest Pacific especially Papua, Mandated New Guinea, and the Solomons. With their wide range of climate from the humid regions of the coast to the cooler uplands, these areas are suited to the cultivation of a large variety of tropical products. Coconuts, rubber, coffee and cocoa are all grown commercially today, and experiments have proved that oil-palm, cotton, kapok, hemp, sugar, rice, tobacco, tea, and such drugs as cinchona and cocaine can also be produced. At the same time, the fact that some of these crops may in the future cease to be profitable for foreign enterprise should be borne in mind. Coconuts, for example, are already being replaced by soya beans and cotton seed, and the stimulus given by wartime needs to the development of synthetic substances may soon restrict the demand for rubber and cinchona. The major portion of colonial revenue is everywhere derived from taxes levied on commercial undertakings, and considerable profits have to be made before schools, hospitals, law courts, and the other institutions of civilization can receive adequate support. Liberal welfare policies have so far been possible only in territories subjected to intensive exploitation. The Malay States, producing enormous quantities of rubber and tin, were able to operate elaborate health services and an excellent system of education, whereas the Solomon Islands, almost wholly dependent upon copra, the price of which was consistently low for more than a decade, could not afford to establish a single properly equipped hospital or school. Modern commercial enterprise requires land and labor, however, and the first part of this article is devoted to a consideration of the harmful effects which a failure to restrict these demands will have on the local

Geography · Political science · Welfare · Climate Change, Adaptation, Migration · Island Studies and Pacific Affairs · Pacific and Southeast Asian Studies

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