CORRESPONDENCE.

Mount Ida Chronicle, Volume IV, Issue 208, 21 February 1873, Page 6

CORRESPONDENCE.

(To the Editor of the Mottnt Ida Chronicle.) Sir,—Seeing in one of your late issues, something about Mining Associations copied from the 'Tuapeka Times,' and considering that it is a subject that ought to have been looked into before, I beg to offer you these few remarks. On the first mention of Mining Associations, very little notice was taken in this place. After a while, some sensible and stirring person or persons, went to the trouble and expense of posting up notices, and otherwise publishing that a meeting would be held in the Temperance Hall, "to take into consideration the advisability of forming a Mining Association in Naseby. Miners particularly quested to attend.'' So very few persons attended that it " fell through." The miners of Naseby are the most inanimate and dead to any idea of bettering their position, of any that ever I have, come across. They.growl about the dry times, the high price of water, the want of a Sludge Channel, ■ and one thing and another, yet when there is a chance of bettering their position, they let it slip through their fingers. Here is Mount Ida, one of the largest and richest of the Goldfields, without an Association, while other districts not nearly so-large, such as Bannockburn, have formed themselves into self-pro-tecting bodies. The annual Conference of miners would do a great deal of good, especially to those districts which have Associations, and there is no plausible reason why Mount Ida should not have one._ The expense would be merely nominal. Of course the business-men will do nothing, they think it will not pay them ; but they lose sight of the fact, that if they were to assist the miners, they would not find it necessary to keep half as many names in the list of " Wanteds." A Miners'" Association would do good individually, and be beneficial to the whole district. , Hoping this matter will be seen to, I am, &c, VIETUTE ET LaBORE