MINES MANAGEMENT

Evening Star, Issue 22209, 11 December 1935, Page 8

MINES MANAGEMENT

TRAINING OF ENGINEERS DEPARTURE AT WAIKI The engagement of a staff cadet at a Waihi gold min© to learn the practical side of management is a departure for the industry in this country. “An interesting item this year is the fact that the Martha Gold Mining Company (Waihi) has taken on one of our students who has just finished his course as a staff cadet to learn the practical side of his profession by helping the manager and assistant managers in their routine work and by helping in the surveying, drawing, and sampling work,” stated Dr Andrew (dean of the Mining Faculty) _ in his annual report to the Otago University Council. “ This is a departure fof New Zealand; till now our nien have had to get their practical work in the manual jobs, which after a time become • monotonous, and which, after they have been mastered, call for little brain work in their repetition. “ A certain amount of manual work is a necessary- part of practical training for an executive, but an excess of it leads iflSwhere; it is brains, and not brawn, that will develop the mining industry in New Zealand. The staff cadet is an ordinary feature of mines throughout the world. In Australia all the big mines have their group of staff cadets ’ training on to administrative jobs. “ The public generally do not realise the importance of management in mining ; some mines will pay under bad management; some mines will never pay even under the best management; but with the bulk of mines success or failure depends on management,' and management includes, not only the work of the mine manager and his staff, but also the general manager and directors, and also the promoters and organisers of the mine, who arranged Jlie original financed