GOLD MINING V. HARVESTING.

Grey River Argus, Volume XIV, Issue 1724, 12 February 1874, Page 3

GOLD MINING V. HARVESTING.

[OTAQO GUARDIAN.] The quantity of gold annually raised swells the list of bur exports, and is a theme' of rejoicing and gratulation to every postprandial orator who dilates on the | general prosperity of New Zedlahd. I . Every year our miners, raise from, the otherwise barren soil gold to the ■value of nearly two millions sterling. And white-vested patriots smile, and rub their hand* and (talk largely of "our Gold-fields." To nine-tenths of them it represents so much tea and sugar, and brandy and tobacco, and the profits accruing on the sale thereof— nothing more. They never stop to ask how the ■' bees who gather the honey are thriving. Tell them that by a system of excessive and unjust taxation, superadded on a cruel monopoly which compels the miner to take everything the buyers choose to give for.his produce, and they shake their sagacious heads in deprecation of such "radical talk." For that is the name given to the loud cry of the gold-pro-ducers for j uafcice and fair play. <• Cannot the merchants and traders of Dnnedin understand that to grind down the price of gold to the lowest minimum, is to destroy the mining industry ? That, in stern reality, men are being driven away from gold-mining, and that the goose that has laid the golden eggs is being killed. Not long since we were gravely assured that so prosperous were -the. miners that there average earnings were 60s and 70s per week ! But now -that the miners can get' ordinary laborers' wages they are leaving the gold-fields to wield' the scythe, the shears, the spade, the pick— anything— anywhere, but work on the gold-fields. Never was a .more fatal blunder com.raitted by any State than that of which New Zealand has been guilty. Had the State fostered and encouraged mining, as other Colonies have done, our export of gold would have been doubled. As it now stands, it is a waning industry. Men will not work at gold-digging when : they can get anything else to do. And J miners — fdr mining has become a professional pursuit— will not remain in a country where fcthey aire over-weighted with taxation, and compelled by necessity —a necessity which is the outcome of the State's criminal . negligence— to part with their produce, at a price far below its value. The only possible result of the present state of affairs will be the permanent destruction of the mining industry, forthe temporary benefit of -foreign capitalists, who contribute pot one farthing towards the alleviation of the terrible burden of . taxation, which cripples our industries and presses, so heavily on our shoulders.. . . ■.. .. 's '... ,y