AN UNFORTUNATE CLASS OF INVESTORS,

Otago Witness, Issue 1449, 30 August 1879, Page 8

AN UNFORTUNATE CLASS OF INVESTORS,

Thatenglish mine investors should have become discouraged, not to say disgusted, with th experience on this coast, is not to be wondered at. With few exceptions their investments whether made in stocks, mines, tunnel or other schemes, have turned out badly. Whatever they have been concerned in has been attended with disappointment and failure. They had only to touch a living thing and it died. Arid yet they do not seem to have acte.d precipitately in making these investments They neglected none of the usual precautions, and overlooked none of the safeguards that are considered essential to success. On the contrary they appear to have acted with prudence — coolly, deliberately, with all that business acumen and commercial sagacity for whioh they are proverbial. They consulted what wheredeemedintelligent and reliable sources of information in'regard to our mines; they employed competent experts to examine them; they came and looked at them themselves; and, finally, having purchased, these properties and raised sufficiency of working capital, placed them under a oapable supervision, and await' ed results, which in nine oases out of ten, have come only in the shape of disappointment, vexation, and loss. It may well be asked how this has happened. There is something phenomenal about it. It is inexplicable. We cannot account for it, and allude to the fact because of its strangeness, and in the hope that some one, being especially informed touching the causes of these failures so general and almost uniform, if any such there be, will vouchsafe to give the public the benefit of his knowledge. — San Francisco Press.