OUR TRADE RETURNS.

Auckland Star, Volume XLI, Issue 27, 1 February 1910, Page 4

OUR TRADE RETURNS.

Ifjwe were in search of a fortunate omen to open the new year for us under the most satisfactory auspices, we could hardly hope for any better proof of our financial and commercial prosperity than is afforded by the trade returns for the last month. Almost every important item in our long list of exports shows a substantial rise in values, and in some cases the increase over the corresponding period of last year is remarkably impressive. Our butter export for January is valued in round figures at £72,000, as against £59.000 for January, 1909; cheest has risen from £2500 to £4100: flax has risen from £5500 to £9100; hides and skins have risen from £3000 to £ 6100, while wool has risen from £41,000 to £93,000; and the gold and silver export combined has increased from £47,300 to £92,300. These increases, more especially in the case of wool and flax, represent a rise in market values as well as an increase in quantities; but the fact that, comparing the periods mentioned, our butter export has increased from 11,400 cwt. to 14,000 cwt., our cheese export from 390 cwt. to 1610 cwt., and our wool export from 1,354,0001b5. to 2,305,0001b5-, demonstrates clearly enough that while the market price of our staple products has been rising the volume our external trade has been growing in proportion far more rapidly.

So long as the great agricultural and pastoral industries on which national prosperity is always most firmly based are steadily expanding, the immediate iuture of the country is always secure; and it is chiefly upon the splendid prospects of our trade in wool and flax and butter and cheese that our hopes of Auckland's commercial destiny are founded. But we have a great advantage over most other districts in the Dominion in possessing another extractive industry -which, though inferior in stability to the wool and dairy industries, has already played an important part in the development of this part of the country. Auckland has been bountifully endowed with mineral wealth, and in spite of the enormous sum secured in past years from our mines, we have hardly begun to exploit them yet on systematic lines. But the application of the most advanced scientific methods to the processes of gold mining are now producing their natural result, and so we find that the Auckland gold return for January, 1910, shows more than twice the value recorded for January, 1909. It is true that the total output for the year is valued at £ 1.313,824, as compared with £1,317,419 for 190 S. But this slight decrease is accounted for by the working out of rich patches in certain mines which had swelled the return s for the two previous years; and a gross return of considerably over a million and a quarter sterling is certainly not to be despised. The Waihi mine has even increased its great reputation as a goldwinner, and recent developments in other auriferous districts encourage high hope for the future of the industry in Auckland. The need for testing the Thames deep levels is an old story; but we may be surf that if the Americans, or even the Australians, possessed a field which had yielded such phenomenal returns on the surface, they would long since have found the capital to work it at greater •depths. Happily there is now every prospect that the Deep Levels scheme will be speedily carried into effect; and though we cannot claim that the recent history of our gold mines has altogether borne out the rich promise of earlier 3 T ears, we believe that only the judicious application of capital in sufficient amount is needed to revive gold mining in Auckland on a very large scale, and thus to enrich not only the district, but the. whole Dominion.