Palm Oil Cultivation
The oil-palm in the old days was the glorious heritage of the native, who found a ready sale for such oil as his women-folk were able to extract by a slow and laborious process. It is likely that the native believed that so long as he retained the tree and the fruit, his time-honoured oil business would never be taken from him, but the great and growing demand for oil has beaten him, and he is fast losing the trade because he can no longer make the quantity that the market requires. Palm oil is now requisitioned for a hundred-and-one new uses. It is no longer the monopoly of the soap-maker or the chandler. Palm oil deodorised by hydrogen is needed for the “nut butters” of the vegetarian; makers of nitro-glycerine explosives derive their glycerine constituents more and more from palm oil; whilst the exploiters of novelties in metal polishes ransack the ship’s hold for leakages from the palm-oil cask. Oil must be had in increasing quantity; machinery speeds up the production; yet still the cry is for more oil, until the European himself attempts to become owner of thousands of trees, eagerly and not too scrupulously encroaching on lands that once were considered native, in the vain hope of finding a speedier road to prosperity.