CORRESPONDENCE.

Cromwell Argus, Volume I, Issue 22, 13 April 1870, Page 5

CORRESPONDENCE.

fW® 4° ‘ l!> hold ourselves responsible for ;he opinions expressed by our correspondents.]

To the Editor of the Cromwell Arcus.

Sir, —Believing your columns are open to all classes of the community, I avail myself of the piivilege to complain of facts which appear to me to possess all the attributes of inj ustice. 1 always understood that the Banks in this colony had provided, by rules and regulations, that their agents should be debarred from speculating or becoming shareholders in any goldmining claim in their respective districts : (such is the case with the Bank of New South Wales.) Now I find that the chief agent of oirr bank at Alexandra has had his name registered as a shareholder in six different Gold Alining and Water Race Companies in the Dunstau district.

By their position, the agents of banks on the gold-fields possess knowledge of all rich golden claims, the exact quantity of gel 1 produced every week, and, by a simple subtraction of weekly wages, the net profits (approximately) of every company that deal with them. And as dissensions frequently arise amongst companies of miners, and dissolutions of partnership take place, we find that some bank agent is ready to step in at the sale which follows, with some good friend, and purchase the claim, the richness of which he is well aware of by the secret transactions of the bank j and thus the real working miner is kept out of it. . Such was the case not very long ago, when a claim was sold by order of the Alexandra Warden’s Court.

While the population of miners at Alexandra has not been less during the last five months than it was during the corresponding months of last year, strange to say the escort returns from Alexandra have shown a considerable decrease j while, on the other hand, the escort returns from Clyde for the same period show a consider, increase, although the latter place does not possess one fifth of the mining population of Alexandra.

If the agents at the banks on the gold-fields are to be allowed to have the monopoly of the gold mining claims, the sooner such institutions are abolished, the better for the country.—l am, &c., A Bona Fide Miner. Alexandra, April 9, 1870.