MARKETING COCONUTS AND COPRA 157 



growers ship most of their coconuts direct to New 

 York, where prices range so high that it pays the 

 planters to favour that market instead of making 

 copra or oil. Moreover, there is a big local consump- 

 tion among the 200,000 Indian coolies now in 

 Trinidad and British Guiana. Sydney is the 

 recognised centre for the collection against shipment 

 to Europe of the South Seas copra. Within recent 

 years a world-famed British soap-making firm has 

 effected a considerable saving by extracting oil and 

 coconut butter in Australia and shipping these 

 products instead of the crude copra, which is a much 

 more expensive freight. The natural supplies of 

 coconuts in the South Seas were always extensive, 

 but they have been greatly increased by planting, 

 partly under native and partly under European and 

 American auspices. Whether the oil and the coco- 

 nut butter extractions, with the subsequent pre- 

 paration of the by-products, are carried out at some 

 Australian centre or whether the copra be shipped 

 to European ports and there treated is, as an 

 expert points out, quite immaterial from the 

 coconut planter's standpoint. His principal pre- 

 occupation is the continuance of a steadily expand- 

 ing market for cocoanuts and their various products, 

 and this is practically assured for many years to 

 come. 



So far as London is concerned the coconuts 

 themselves are handled by fruit brokers, who are 



