SATURDAY, OCTOBER 8, 1869.

New Zealand Herald, Volume VI, Issue 1790, 9 October 1869, Page 4

SATURDAY, OCTOBER 8, 1869.

Tiieuk are signs that the depression in mining interests, aniounti I;almost to a panic, which set in some six weeks ago, his reached its limit. 11 has indeed worked lis own cure. The publication of a mcinori.il to register a gold mining company is njw as st' Mom to be seen in the daily papers as it was once impossible to take up a paper without, seeing at least a dozen of them. Scrip became so unsaleable that men ceased to dabble in it as an occupation, and, as a consequence, industry has flowed back into iis proper channel. We 110 longer see Queen-otreet thronged with minors, buying and selling for a rise. They have found more legitimate if not more profitable, work in the mines themselves. The speculating public, too, found that they had enough to do in meeting the calls neccssary for the working of claims into which they had bought, without increasing their ventures and liabilities. Thus a healthier state of things has been gradually brought about. There are sLill many who have so involved themselves that they must sell portionsof the stock they hold in order to meet immediate calls upon them, and hence we believe the otherwise unaccountable fall in the prices of dividend-paying and firstclass stock, inasmuch as other mining interests being unsaleable, forced sales could only be effected in well known and proved claims. The number, however, of persons who are so situated is daily becoming less, for those who now buy do 30 with a knowledge of the liabilities they incur; a matter little understood, and less thought of, a couple of months ago.

Another and a very certain cause of improvement is the steady addition which lias been made to our population both of men of means and working miners. Not a vessel arrives from the Southern provinces or other colonies but bring* her full complement of passengers. We read of four steamers, the John Penn, Airedale, Keera, and Charles Edwards, all 011 their way from the West Coast loaded with passengers, to bo no doubt followed from time to time by others. All this tells surely, if slowly, in our favour, and if we cannot look for a return of the indiscriminately large prices for stock which once prevailed, we are at least justified in looking for a steady general rise and an increased demand for bona Jide ventures. Such a reaction is now already commencing.

I be situation forced upon the mining community lias been by 110 means one of u.nmixed evil. It is a storm which, as it has passed along, has purified 1 ho commercial atmosphere, and has I au-ht us the necessity of reform in many directions. We have learned wholesome truths even from those who expressed surprise and gratification at flip extent and richness of our goldfield, and are ourselves beginning to see that ill-directed g 'id mining is 110 more profitable than ill-direct, d farming. Our go'dlMd has partaken too much of the character of an illlaid out estate, subdivided into a large number of small farms, consisting of irregular-sized small enclosures, the tenants of which are just able to eke on'" a living, but are utterly unable to brills the appliances aud inventions of modern science and media ih-s to bear upon the improvement of the iand. We are just in sto-li a condition with our goldlkdil—cut; 1111 into little in-couvetiieut-placed daunts of five, eight,

and ten men's ground. The majority of companies arc too weak to do more than carry on from hand to mouth like the cotters 011 the ill-managed estate. Just as in the one case the improver comes in, and levelling useless hedgegrows aud dividing the whole property into a smaller number of good-sized farms, introduces capital, iutelligence, and scope for improvement, so must we reform the management of our mines. Claims must amalgamate and group together according as the natural configuration of the ground and run of the lodes point as most conducive to the general interest of the group, so that the mine as a whole may be worked to the greatest advantage and at the least cost, and so that in all cases whore it is possible to obtain a water supply the company may be able to keep its own battery of stampers at work. The advantages of such amalgamation are so obvious that: we should have hardly thought they needed recapitulation, but that, finding them to be so seldom adopted we can only conclude that they are little thought of, even though acknowledged. Where there arc now several legal managers, each receiving in salary and fees perhaps eighty or a hundred pounds per annum, there need be but one. So, too, with mining managers —instead of having half a dozen men, not one perhaps of whom is really competent for the duties of the odicc. the half-dozen claims amalgamated could procure for less than half the cost the services of a thoroughly practical anil experienced man. The natural advantages afforded by the configuration of the ground could bo then availed of in working the larger claim, and a large percentage 011 the cost of labor saved, with greater and surer results attending as a conseiuencc of that labour : while the whole of the works aud the action of the mining manager would be better looked after and considered by an able, aud perhaps paid directory, chosen from the amalgamated company, than could be ever in the case of each separate claim. So too, in the necessary requirements of machinery. The one strong company can incur ail expenditure, or offer security for the means, to raise the best and most elaborated appliances for crushing and amalgamating purposes. while the separate companies of which it; is composed could not, individually do so. it must come to this eventually ; and it were a great deal better that we set ourselves to the work of reform, for our own advantage, than have if forced upon us for the advantage of outsiders. Wo can see pretty clearly that it will come to this : that if the majority of small mining companies at the Thames will persist in continuing the same system of work in 2; the claims which iias hitherto prevailed they will sooner or later—their means having become exhausted—fall altogether into the hands of Australian capitalists. A claim of ten men's ground fully manned cannot be kept in work twelvemonths for less than from £1300 to £2000, and what is the return without machinery? There may he a fair-sized leader.or two opened up, which would pay handsomely for crushing with proper facilities, but to cart the stone to the nearest machine—a work which can only bedone in certain seasons— andthe cost of the crushing will leave little or nothing for other expenses, much less for profit, unless the stone be exceptionally rich. The stone, too, is in such cases rushed quickly through the machine to the loss of a portion of the gold, for of course it is the interest of machine owners to put as many tons of stone through the machine as they can in the twenty-four hours. 111 all ways, then, the small weak claim works at a disadvantage.

If, after all, the check in speculation which has been forced upon us of late leads to a consideration of these and connate mutters in connection with mining enterprise, ami to the inauguration of a better svstctn of management generally, we shall not as a community have really lost by the turn which events have taken. We may have learned i» time a lesson which will enable us to enter more prosperously on a career of enterprise now open to us than which none could offer more opportunities for success if rightly availed of.