Evening Republican, Volume 59, Number 62, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 4 April 1917 — JAPAN CORNERING FIJI PEARL SHELLS [ARTICLE]

JAPAN CORNERING FIJI PEARL SHELLS

Monopolizes Supplies From Islands to Control the Button Market HISTORY OF THE INDUSTRY Frenchman Sends Samples of Shells Home as Curios and Negotiations Are Opened for Regular —SuppHes. ~~ ~ Sydney. Australia. —Word comes to Sydney from the Fiji Islands that the Japanese have not only monopolized the trochas shell supply of that group, but are encouraging the “skinning” of the reefs, and are thus indirectly threatening the destruction of the shell output of Fiji. Not only so, but advices lately received from Brisbane are to the effect that the Japanese are seeking to exploit the shell supply of Thursday island and elsewhere on the northern side of the Australian continent. - In Curious Position. “The shell industry is in a curious position,” writes the Suva {Fiji), correspondent of the Sydney Daily Telegraph. “Buttons are made out of trochas shell, or, as it is termed in the Fiji islands, sici (pronounced seethee). The industry was started in a novel manners Over 15 years ago a Frenchman named Gaspard sent some of the shells home as curios, and they came under the notice of a man in the line who opened negotiations with Gaspard, and regular supplies were from then on sent to France to be turned into buttons. He paid the untutored Eijlans $1 or $1.25 per ton in those davs, but the present price in Suva is for No. 1 shell. S2OO per ton; No. 2. $147.50; No. 3, $97.50. The gradation is according to size. “France and Austria practically monopolized this industry, but the war caused a change, and it is doubtful if any buttons are made nowadays in France or Austria. The trade is now a Japanese monopoly. * All the local shell finds its way to Japan, whence it is exported as a manufactured product. -The price varies considerably for reasons not known here. The shells are found inf plentiful -numtiers on the coral reefs surrounding the (Fiji) islands, and merely have to be picked - * up. Enormous quantities are shipped to Japan by every steamer. “The high prices obtained for the product have, caused the natives to bring in large quantities of ‘chicken’

shell, which is of no commercial value, and if this conduct is permitted to continue the reefs will soon be stripped of the valuable shell. “J. M. Hedstrom, an elected member of the Fiji legislative council, who interested himself in the matter, brought it up at the last meeting of the council, and received the_B.r.QXolse -that-if-the-Suvjr And Levuka chambers of commerce were of the same opinion, action would be taken by the government. pi** ' “That gentleman showed your correspondent some samples of the shell. The shell from 1 inch to 1% inches in diameter, weighing about 45 to the pound, which is of no commercial value. No. 1 shell, from 2 inches to 3% inches in diameter, weighs about 5 to the pound, and fetches S2OO per ton. If the valueless ‘chicken’ shell, he said, were allowed to remain on the reefs, for two years, it would grow to No. 1 shell, one ton of it would weigh nine tons, and it would be worth probably $1,750 instead of nothing. ■—V- ■ “‘Chicken’ shell from one ancLonehalf to two- inches in diameter Is worth about $65 or S7O per ton locally. One firm shipped last November ten tons of this shell to Japan, and It was valued at about $750, free on board. If the shell had been allowed to remain on. the reefs for about two years It would have weighed about 50 tons and been worth over SIO,OOO. “Tlie Suva chamber of commerce has indorsed Mr. Hedstrom’s plan.” A market having been found in Japan for Thursday island trochas .shell, the scarcity of labor for the Industry will be met by engaging Australian natives for the work.