The New Zealand Herald. AUCKLAND, MONDAY, MARCH 5, 1866.

New Zealand Herald, Volume III, Issue 719, 5 March 1866, Page 4

The New Zealand Herald.

AUCKLAND, MONDAY, MARCH 5, 1866.

SPECTE3IUK AGENDO. " Give every roan thino enr, but few thy voice : Take each man's censure, but reserve thy judgement. This above *11, —To thine ownsclf' be true ; And it must follow, as the iilffht the day, Thou canst not then be falso to any man."

It lias been truly saicl that; never at any time were the people of this Province more anxious and earnest that the resources of the country should be opened lip and developed, than they now are. We have been swimming with bladders for some time past, but tlio bladders have now burst, and we must strike out vigorously and with a will, if we should keep our heads above water. Never perhaps was a? country endowed with richer resources than this Province of Auckland, aud that they remain inutilisedat tlio present moment, considering the very large amount of capital lying in private hands, is at first sight extraordinary. The reason may, we believe, in a great measure be attributed to the fact that the capital and the experience and knowledge necesary to enter upon the different fields lying open for enterprise are not eommonly ahared by the same individual. The practical man who could turn our ores, flax, and quarries to account Las not tho capital at hand to enable him to do so. The capitalist has not the practical knowledge which would otherwise give him confidence in the safeness of the investment. We have an instance of this in tlio fact that while our iron sand, piled tons upon tons in some part of the Province, lies literally waste and unused, our timber is turned to profitable account. It is not that tlioro is a bettet market or readier sale for timber than for iron, cither within the Colony or without, but because tho practical knowledge to worlc the one resource and the means to do so are united in numbers of our individual settlers. It is not so in the other case. The intelligent mechanic from the "black country." or tlio scientific man who feels and knows the value of tho Titaniferous sand lying before him, has not tho uieaua to carry out the plans which hia experience or skill would suggest, aud so the Province produces timber in abundance, but no iron. "We have auother instance of this in the material, FJiormium tcnax. A few days since we drew attention to the discovery of Messrs. Purchas and In innis, and as our readers are aware these two gentlemen have at least succeeded in inducing capitalists to examine into their scheme for the preparation of flax with a view to carrying it out extensively. So far so good, but the nativeHax of-New Zealand is, we believe, capable of being worked into a far more valuable texture than even that at which these gentlemen aim. A sample of dressed fiax has, wo know, been sent to the 11 ax districts in England, and has been pronounced of tho very finest quality and valued at £70 per ton in bulk. Tho discoverer of the process was a practical mechanic, a stapler by trade, but was not possessed of the ; capital to make his discovery useful to ; himself, and so it remains a secret, and the country loses a magnificent export. What ; is required is the co-operation of brain and < gold. At home a working man, if he makes 1 a discovery in mechanism or manufactures, [ can at once find men who have the capital to s utilise his discovery, and the conjoint work- t ing of the two brings wealth to both. A c man can there sell his idea, if it is at all a J practical one, and many of the fortunes of the west country have been made by the T purchasers of the idea of the working man, c who could not himself have carried it to x fruition. 1 S

" Our present object is not, however, so 1 nucli ta point out, with a view to removing; he evil working of this feeling of distrust beween Capital and genius existing amongst us, o ls to present to those of our readers vho may be anxious to speculate for " the a ;ood of the country and fifty per cent.," a * lew field of* enterprise which comes to us 1 luthoritatively endored as a sound and prac- v :ieablo one. We allude to tlie vast quan- J .ities of iron sand, millions ot tons of which tro to be found not only at laranaki but £ ipon the coasts of this Province, We have l jefore us " Griffith's JXonthly Iron-trade , Circular" for December last, published in < Wolverhampton. The important informa- ] iion contained in it respecting the results of ( recent experiments made at Tonic, and < he iron dust of New Zealand cannot | be over-rated. One of the most vain- : ible mineral ores in the. world, un- , Limited in supply, unequalled in quality, . unsurpassed in the richness of its jaeld of ] pUro metal, may be gathered up in tons upon the surface of the soil in many parts of this Province, and Noi tli Island. Wc 1 might, in fact, command the iron market of the world, and become the producers of an export more valuable than even that of gold, tor if a profit of £150, as stated in the Mining Journal, has been made upon 100 tons ot' ivonsand sent from Taranaki to an Knglish firm, what might not New Zealand ironmasters realize upon the spot, with fuel in abundance ; and even though the cost of labor would be dearer here than at home, we must still remember that in shipping the iron sand home freight had to be paid upon the gross bulk, not on the metal only extracted from the sand or ol'e. Writers at home there, of course, are who throw doubts upon the practicability of working the New Zealand iroh-sand. One of these, writing to the Muting Journal, says, " Plenty of iron, plenty of wood, and to " be near a seapovt, are all that is desirable *• for a furnace ; but there is still to be dc- " cided, will it pay to produce pig-iron in " New Zealand for the English market ?" The prices of the Auckland labour market are then quoted as an evidence that it will not pay to do so with firewood at 10s. per ton, and the wages of labourers at 9s. per day of eight hours. The prices of labour in this Province thus named were, doubtless, correct at the date at which they are given, but they have declined now, we are glad to say, nearly one-half, and must submit to . still farther reduction before the coming winter has passed. We should not be at all surprised to find that unskilled labour will be quoted not at 9s as, during the war time, nor now as ss, but as 3s Gel and 4-s at the utmost, and then another, perhaps the greatest hindrance to the development of the resources of the Province which has yet existed, will have been removed —and the labourer placed in a far better position —for the regular employment, he would then enjoy would more than compensate for the extra price hitherto paid for only a portion of his time, and the enforced idleness of the remainder of it. Then again, the heavy cost of firewood lor conversion into charcoal is met by the fact that charcoal need not necessarily be used, coal upon' eitner coast of this Province is obtainable at a very cheap rate in large quantities, and could be manufactured into coke at no great expense. It was coke with which the iron manufactured by Mr. Martin was smelted from the New Zealand iron sand. It must, too, be borue in mind that the great tensile power contained in this iron will compensate largely for the cost of its production. If a cable chain constructed of it, for instance, will bear a strain of one- j third more than a chain will bear mado of j ordinary good iron, two tons of the iron will do the work of three, or it will take only two tons of jN'ew Zealaud iron, at £12 15s. per ton, to construct a cable that will be equal in length and strength to one made from three tons of ordinary Staffordshire iron at the present rate, of say £8 10s. per ton. The same rule applies to all other purposes in which Btrength is the main requisite. Nor must it be forgotten that the lightness of the : piece of machinery would in most instances give it additional value over the other. It is not, wo believe, however, too much to say that the .extra value of the metal made from the New Zealand iron sand will more than compensate for- the additional cost of labor and fuel. Intereatiug extracts from Gh-iffitli s Iron Trade Circular, the Daily Post, and the Midland Counties J<lvpress, upon the abovo subject will be fotind elsewhere.