THE ALLEGED MINING SWINDLE.

New Zealand Herald, Volume XXV, Issue 9064, 26 May 1888, Page 3

THE ALLEGED MINING SWINDLE.

[FROM A CORRESPONDENT.] Paeroa, Thursday. The Marototo Broken Hills swindle appears to be making a place for itself in the annals of local mining, and the action of our worthy Warden (Mr H. W. Northcroft) over the same matter stands out in bold relief. Local public opinion, although unanimous in its applause of the Warden for his action in this particular case, is yet divided as to whether or no he has acted ultra vires, and intends to make his action and its corollary a precedent. The evidence that the affair was a swindle was after all purely circumstantial. There may even yet prove to be payable ore in the reef. There is nothing in the law— nor should there be—to compel applicants for leases of mining property to show the Warden or any other person where the good stuff is, or tell them whether they have any. We know from his past career that Mr. Northcroffc is a gentleman " sans peur et sans reproche," and from that infer that his action in this case is purely from a high motive and a desire for the common well-being. Yet were a precedent created that any warden of any goldfield (and all wardens have not been mm reproche) could refuse to grant a license to a holding until " work had been done to prove the character of the reefs in the ground," much damage would be done by the retarding of prospecting. The law would be subject to the warden's caprice, or knowledge of metallurgy, etc. Very few applicants for licensed noldings could show payable ore straight away, and fewer could afford to employ labour to discover the payable ore which they hoped existed on the otf chance. Capital is the true prospector. As a rule, applicants for leases are those who cannot afford to hold and prospect a registered claim by miners' rights. In this new era of mining, when stone is not judged by its colours of gold, and when so few prospectors really understand mineralogy and the study of ores, the main thing is to get a reef, and to get it in a country which has a name for good rich ore—such as Marototo. Rarely does the prospector risk waiting until he has tested the ore and found it payable before applying for a lease. The chances are that if he did, he would be jumped (vide Anderson v. McDonough, Warden's Court, Thames, this month). He then applies for a lease. To him enters the Sydney syndicate man, who does not want the reef or the ground, but their name and position—the name and position of the district which for the time is being boomed. He makes the prospector an offer before the license is granted or any prospecting done. Can you blame tho man for accepting money when it is offered him ? Ten chiinces to one but there is something good somewhere in the reef, which the prospector believes the middleman may know of, and therefore takes his money honestly as for moneys' worth. I am no apologist for "wildcat" mines, but in this instance I think with many others, that blame has been cast upon the wrong persons. Those who are to blame are, hrst of all, the capitalists, who entrust their business to such middlemen ; and, secondly, the middlemen themselves, who, under the guise of benefactors to the district rob it of all it has at present— the promise of the future. Every effort should be made to put down mining swindles, and in this instance and in all instances the '' salters" should be discovered at any cost. But do not let any precedents be made that will tend to retard bona fide prospecting. Herbert Spencer has plainly shown that some legislation, while putting down ono wrong, will evolve or encourage a far greater. It is better that a few speculators should lose from their own folly in not having taken tho trouble to inquire closer into the boiia fides of their investment, than that the progress of an entire district should be retarded. No prospector will expend his time, money, trouble, and health in searching for reefs while he has such a ruling dangling over him, that his lease will not be granted until the "reef is proven." The verdict of the prospectors and mining men themselves, who after all are the people most interested, is, that the end arrived at by the Warden is most beneficial; but it is Jesuitical, and the means may carry more damage than the end can repair.