THE GOLD MINERS

New Zealand Herald, Volume LXIX, Issue 21278, 3 September 1932, Page 1 (Supplement)

THE GOLD MINERS

A NATIONAL ASSET

BT KOTAB.O

The era of the great gold rushes in the South contributed much more than financial prosperity to the development of New Zealand. The Southern settlements had hitherto been able to maintain their original form and character. They had been established for certain definite ends and their ideals had been carefully and jealously guarded. The settlers that followed the earliest pioneers came from the same stock and easily fitted into the pattern that had been fixed from the beginning. But the gold boom brought in thousands of eager and competent colonists who knew not Joseph and cared nothing for local traditions and standards. There was a period of hostility between the old and the new; but adjustments very soon were effectively made, and the two elements blended much more readily than had at one time seemed possible. 1 For one thing •it was difficult for the representatives of the older tradition to maintain an attitude of aloofness toward the men who had made so remarkable a contribution to the revenues of the province. In a dozen years Otago miners won over thirteen million pounds worth of gold. The early days of the colony had been marked by incessant struggle against poverty. Money was scarce and means of revenue few. Now business was flourishing, and coffers were full. The Otago settlement had aimed at giving education a central place in the community life. But that needed money. It was clear that the coming of the miners, however it may have been resented by the old brigade, had made it possible to carry out the broad cultural ideals on which the colony had been founded. The Miner Type But the newcomers were themselves citizens for the most part of whom any pioneer community might be proud. They were physically strong; they were enterprising and adventurous; and they had learned in a hard school the value and necessity of strenuous work. Many of them were men of education. They had money and they believed that money was made fpr spending. There was the usual riffraff, of course, the flotsam that comes up with every flowing tide. There was even the criminal element, an overflow from the convict settlements in Australia. But the vast majority of the miners were men with a respect for law and order. The increase of population turned out to be an. asset of, incalculable value to New Zealand. We needed men and still more men. We needed, too, a certain type of man. The diggings gave both tho quantity and the quality. The miners were the secondary deposit in the formation of the Southern population. Fused with the original settlers they gave a foundation upon which the national life could be safely and soundly built. In my youth I knew many of the original miners of the golden days. They were among the loyalist and most useful of our citizens Some of them still felt from time to time the call of the gold fields. I have met loiie fossickers in the back country ol Central Otago who still followed the gleam:

Like an Arab, old and blind, Some caravan has left behind. Mr. Seddon often expressed the opinion that somewhere in the mountains of Otago there lay the mother lode, the vein of pure gold from which all the rich deposits of the rush days had been carried down by the streams and scattered here and there over the valleys. These old men had that same faith and they kept up the search till death took them. The scientific mind in vain declared that the streams had acted as collecting agents, not as disseminators of the gold. You could not persuade the indefatigable searchers that their dreams of a mother lode would not some day be realised in the discovery of a field so rich that all the millions previously won would seem a negligible trifle iu comparison. To them at least it gave the chance to travel hopefully. The West The Westland fields were as rich as the Otago diggings. They also produced thirteen million pounds worth of gold in a dozen years'. The gold area was not so remote and forbidding as further south, and the climatic conditions were much better. As a result the mining population was able to fix upon the whole community its own standards. They constituted the community, and it took its shape from them. The kindliness and openhanded generosity and genial sociability of the mining days became the marks of the West Coast type and they still persist. The West Coaster was cut off. by the barrier of the Alps from the tides that normally swept the centres of New Zealand life where more intercommunication was possible. lie was self-reliant and enterprising. He found himself attached politically to Canterbury, and he did not believe that he was being given the consideration his importance under the new conditions fully justified. Canterbury acknowledged that Westland had claims to more local government both on account of the wealth she was contributing to the Provincial Treasury and of her vast increase in population. But there was no guarantee that the wealth and the population had any assurance of permanence at their inflated level. It was decided to appoint a Warden of the Gold Fields who would have almost dictatorial powers over the huge heterogeneous population that had swarmed into the West. Mr. G. S. Sale was appointed warden—probably as difficult a position as any New Zealand public man ever found himself in. Mr. Sale was powerful physically, had unlimited courage, knew men, and had intellectual resources that enabled him to see round and through any situation. He was a distinguished graduate and tutor of Cambridge, who, in a spirit of adventure, had abandoned the attractions of a life of cloistered ease and thrown in his lot with the colony. King Sale

"King" Sale lie was always called in those days. "He had," says Dr. Harrop, "unlimited powers to deal with all judicial and financial questions, and assisted by the police to preserve the peace and good order of the district." He had to supervise public health. He could make loans for public improvements, build wharves—fulfil, in short, in this huge seething community all the functions of the law and the government. There must be few figures in New Zealand history whose careers would form a better basis for, a vivid historical novel. The Canterbury Provincial Government unfortunately took steps to assert its authority just when Sale had brought order out of chaos and had won the confidence of his vast constituency. "A man of more business capabilities, purer disinterestedness or sterner integrity never trod the shores of Westland." G. S. Sale was later Professor of Classics at Otago University. He died at a great age some ten years ago. The West Cost miners dominating the life of the community and conscious as no other group of New Zealand miners have ever been that they set the standards for the whole community, not only devised a social code of their own, but adopted a special form of dress. A high slouch hat cocked up in front and turned down at the back was de rigueur on any full dress occasion. It was adorned by a crimson puggaree. The colour scheme was further carried out in the scarf and belt, which were both of crimson silk. A 6ort of top-boot concealed the lower extremities of the universal moleskin trousers. The great days are long gone, but the spirit of the mining days is Still the spirit of the West Coast.