PROSECUTION OF INDUSTRIES.

Otago Witness, Issue 712, 21 July 1865, Page 1

PROSECUTION OF INDUSTRIES.

(Prom the Daily Times, Jtl/ 17 )

Marked and rapid as the progress of Otago has been during the last four years — that is since the discovery of the gold fields opened to it a new career — that result can scarcely be said to be in any measure due to the prosecution of a systematic endeavor to discover and utilise the natural endowments of the Province, and foster the growth of a varied and comprehensive industry. The material interests of the country have for the most part been left to take care of themselves, the spirit of self-reliance and enterprise, which is a national characteristic, being Telied on in implicit faith in it 3 energy and self sufficiency. In the first instance Otago was systematically colonised. A scheme of settlement was digested, a capital provided, and a chart of industrial occupation to be pursued marked cut in well-defined lines. By the original founders of the Province the turn given to its later fortunes was never anticipated. But since the revolution wrought by the discovery of the gold fields, we have "been content to reap the harvest of a wealth suddenly created ; to prosecute a rapidly augmented and lucrative commerce ; to enter more or less into the exciting speculation for which the occasion was opportune ; and to trust to the lucky chances of the future for the continuance of a prosperity that sound prudence might have suggested was of an exceptional and precarious character. It is tru?, that what has been done here has been done in all the gold colonies in the first flush of their prosperity, and all that has here been omitted to be done has been equally omitted in them all. In this matter, as in others, it seems that every separate people must pass through an individual experience in order to learn the lessons of practical wisdom. The examples of history, often as they are quoted, and aptly Us they have been moralised on, have for the most part been practically set at naught by nations content to accept no truth which they have not found out for themselves, in what has been described as the hardest of all schools. Considering how implicitly the continuance of the prosperity created by the Gold Fields has been relied upon, and how little attention has really been given to the development of new sources of wealth, there is matter almost of wonder in the industrial and trade results of which the Province is at this time able to boast. Its export of gold has in some measure fallen off — not however from any decline in the richness of its fields, a3 abundantly proved by the large average earnings made by the miners employed — but from the diminution in their numbers occasioned by the irresistible attraction offered to them by new rushes. Two of these have severely tested the stability of the mining population of Otago ; and whilst a large industrial army has been left behind to steadily pursue its calling, there have yet been many desertions from its ranks in the shape of those whom curiosity, love of adventure, or a thirst for larger gains, has attracted to the Wakamarina and to Hokitika. Notwithstanding every discouraging circumstance, the fact remains that during the six months ending the 31st December last, the Province of Otago

yielded more than £98,000 out of the

£290,000 paid into the Colonial Treasury in the shape of Customs Duties by the nine provinces, and contributed just one-

third of the entire Revenue of the two islands— viz., £111,000 out of £131,000. That the Province has further ordeals to pas 3 through, may be accepted as a fact to

be practically dealt with.

Its mining

population and its mining returns will ■continue to be fluctuating, until the new conditions of enterprise spoken of by

Mr Pyke are realised. When large capital has been invested in extensive and costly •machinery, a sufficient guarantee will fee afforded against the frequent disturbance of " that settled industry" which,as Mr Pyke remarks, "in the long run, " always yields the highest remuneration " with the largest degree of comfort," and which, it may be added, is most conducive alike to the general social development and .the political maturity of a people. No purpose should be more sedulously pursued by those whose interests * are permanently bound up in the welfare of Otago, than the enlargement of the bases of a settled industry, not only in mining, but in other pursuits. And it is in this direction that 4he want of a wise policy, and of judicious

efforts to give it effect, is conspicuously ?een. If any one fact was more prominntly displayed than another in the recent Exhibition, it was the existence of resources in this Province capable of eustaining an extensive industry and feeding a great traffic, which nothing whatever has yet been done to turn to practical account, and upon the method of utilising which the public generally are profoundly ignorant. Gold is a thing of value which the most uncultivated eye can appreciate, and the ruder modes of extracting it from the earth, are intelligible to the meanest capacity. But other ores do not carry the same demonstration wi'h them. They are not particularly attractive as objects of sight, and they require processes of manipulation to render them articles of commerce, which only the initiated can understand. It is believed by those who are competent iudges on the subject that iron ores in Otago are Cctpable of yielding a metal so nearly approximating in purity to the most valued products of the European mines, as to defray the enhanced cost of smelting operations in the colonies. That copper is present in abundance in certain localities is an ascertained fact ; but only feeble and desultory steps have yet been even attempted to rescue it from the earth, and give it a marketable shape. This is however only one branch of industrial enterprise. A score of others might be enumerated, offering similar, or greater inducement?. By studying peculiarities of climate, soil, and seasons, the industrial forces with which the Province is endowed might be made to furnish the wide basis of a permanent prosperity. This is what has been done in other colonies. The Philosophical Society of New South Wales, and the Royal Societies of Victoria and Tasmania, have taken this practical work in hand ; and by their re - searches and experiments, their publishedtransactions, and their actual superintentendence of industrial measures, have in many instances established the feasibility of new industries, and pointed out the way to their establishment. Even in old countries similar organisations have been long at work with most beneficial results. An enormous stimulus has been given to practical and manufacturing art, since the Exhibition of 1851 ; and if this machinery has been found serviceable in multiplying industrial occupations and improving productive processes in countries rejoicisg already in such advanced development as Great Britain, France, and Germany, it is not easy to estimate their importance and value in young countries in which settlement has been only recently begun, and the capabilities of which wait for experiment to test them before they can become fully known. The un^ developed resources of the colonies are affording a theme of very suggestive discussion to the home papers, in connection with the subjects of acclimatisation, and of the increasing demands of the manufacturers for supplies of raw materal to feed their industry. The establishment of an institution, either supported wholly by contributions, or modestly endowed by the Legislature, taking in charge such a practical work as we have indicated, would seem to be a natural sequence of the late . Exhibition. But the idea appears to have failed to an unaccountable extent to take hold of the public mind. It finds no place in the deliverances of our public men who are candidates for high and influential office. Yet it will be denied by no one that no service could be rendered to the Province equal to the wide development of the bases of its industrial pros perity; that all purely political questions are of minor importance compared with this great practical question. No problem at the present moment is more interesting, or invested with more important issues, than the one which involves the question how best to attract a large population and how to retain it; how to give the greatest inducement to the investment of a reproductive capital ; and how to turn to the most profitable uses the present undiscovered, or wasted, resources of Otago.