A Victorian View of the Production of Gold.

Otago Witness, Issue 1777, 12 December 1885, Page 11

A Victorian View of the Production of Gold.

The following letter, which is quite as applicable to New Zealand as to the sister Colony, appeared in a recent number of the Melbourne Argus : —

TO THE EDITOR OF THE ARGUS.

Sir, — In your second leading article of the 16th inst., you submit that " an ounce of gold from a Victorian mine will buy more foreign raw materials or manufactured goods in 18S5 than it could have bought in 1883, and the prospect is that in 1886 this mineral product of the Colony will have a still wider purchasing power " ; that " it is not necessary to go into the vexed question of whether gold is really scarce, or merely appreciated as compared with commodities; what affects Victoria chiefly is the fact that the Colony produces so many ounces of a standard metal which is becoming exchangeable for more and more commodities every year." If the Colony produced so many fixed ounces of gold at a fixed price eveiy year, your argument would no doubt be perfectly tenable, but year after year the production of gold in Victoria is constantly becoming less. and the cost of winning it is constantly becoming greater as our mines increase in depth, and thus while the purchasing power of the pound sterling may be largely increased, we have not so many pounds sterling the produce of our gold mines at the end of each successive year to purchase more and more commodities with, and the said pound sterling costs more to produce it. In the June number of the " Contemporary Review " will be found a very interesting article by Mr Giffen, in which he says (inter alia), " The leading feature in the depression of trade is the remarkable fall in the prices of all manufactures, and that for several years past the downward tendency of trade corresponds almost exactly with the falling off in the production of gold." Mr Mulhall and other experts may argue that gold is abundant in the vaults of the various banks, but all their sophistry cannot get over the fact that gold is scarce compared, with the constantly - increasing supplies of other commodities of the present day and of 30 years ago. Banks must of necessity keep a certain amount of gold on hand to meet daily demands against their note issues, bills of exchange, and other miscellaneous liabilities; but I imagine that not even Mr Mulhall will venture to assert that in the event of the holders of these miscellaneous credit counters unanimously demanding that they should, be paid, off at their face value in

gold, sufficient would be found in the vaults of the banks for the purpose. Sir William M'Arthur, at a meeting of the Australian trade section of the London Chamber of Commerce, held in July last, is reported to have said — " The exports of gold from Australia had fallen from 12 millions to six million^, and the connection between the diminution in tho production of gold and the badness of trade may be looked upon as cause and effect — in fact, the former is the cause of the latter." In other words, he might have said the present depression in the wool market is not so much due to over-production of gold as to an insufficient production of gold to purchase it with. It is nonsense to say that Australia produces too much wool, frozen meat, grain, &c, while there are so many hundreds of thousands of human beings going about less than half -clad and starving. That which applies to the wool-growing and food-producing industries applies with equal force to all other industries. Give us plenty of gold and then trade will be resuscitated, prices will improve, and there will bo plenty of employment for the people. No doubt our alluvial goldfields are being rapidly exhausted, but alluvial gold is only the offspring of the parent rock ; the birth of progeny does not necessarily destroy the mother. Our mother earth is still young, and will yield her fruits to the husbandman in the mine as well as in the field if we cultivate her resources aright. The annual report of the secretary for mines in Victoria containing the statistics for the year 1884 shows that there are 3768 known quartz reefs in the Colony, that the yield of gold from alluvial mines amounted to 326.3050z, and from quartz mines ■i32,9970z, or 106,6720z in favour of quartzmining; and it is admitted all round that from 10 to 40 per cent, of the gold contained in the matrices is absolutely lost in treatment — say, 20 per cent., and there is nearly 90,0000z of gold lost for the year. Quartz-mining requires a considerable amount of technical knowledge and mechanical and engineering skill to conduct it with even moderate success, and 3 T et how few of our mining managers understand the technical difference between a cross course, a slide, a dyke, or a vault, or can give an intelligent account of the dynamic forces which cause them; how many of our young men, and where are they to be found, who are educating for the honourable profession of mining engineers, according to the standard required by European and Colonial schools of mines ; and it might be asked what inducements and facilities are there for our young men so to educate themselves? There is no such thing as a legalised mining apprenticeship. Miners' associations hold one workman to be as good as another ; the smart and capable man is handicapped and restrained by the careless and the indolent. The university does not see its way to affiliate with our schools of mines, and thereby permit students of said schools benefiting by advantages which the high-class institution is supposed to be capable of conferring. The industry is scarcely recognised by the State except as a means of extracting revenue, and it is handicapped by a fiscal policy which is a disgrace to our statute-book and to politicians who profess to uphold the principle of protection to native industry while they are crushing the life out of the principal native industry the Colony possesses by their inconsistency. A special bonus of £250, offered by the Minister of Agriculture for an improved reaper and harvester, is going a-begging to-day ; but who ever heard of the Minister of Mines offering so much as 250 pence for an improved crusher and gold harvester? It is only a- few months since when a special commission was despatched to America by the Government, without even being asked for, to inquire into and report upon the American system of water conservation and irrigation for agricultural purposes, and much good no doubt will result therefrom ; but water snpply is an equally important factor to the gold-miner, and yet no effort is made by the State to aid him in that direction. Our appliances for reducing and treating auriferous matrices are those of our great grandfathers for the treatment of tin stuffs. No material advance has been made during the century in wet-stamping, calcining, and amalgamating with mercury, and no inducement by way of bonus or preferment has been held out to engineers, metallurgists, and chemists to improve matters. Itf addition to the 3768 known quartz lodes mentioned in the statistics of the mining department, there are innumerable auriferous spurs and leaders known by miners to exist in the dry ranges, where water is not available, and where ib would not pay and is sometimes impracticable to erect plants according to our present system, but which would pay handsomely and give employment to many thousands of workmen if ready, portable, and efficient means of treatment could be erected on the spot where the stone is raised; and I know of no reason why a simple dry process of reduction with a fan or compressed air for separating the debris from the metal may not be set up for this purpose as readily as a coffee-mill upon a grocer's counter ; and if such a machine could be devised for general reducing purposes, our watercourses would not be choked by mining debris, and water, of which we now require 800 gallons to reduce one ton of quartz, would not be such an important element to the miner. Will the Minister of Mines try what effect a good round bonus would have toward the production of such an appliance as we require ? We want a thorough revolution in the commercial status of the mining industry. The State has undertaken the education of the people, and all the available State-aided portals of knowledge must be thrown open to those of the people who are desirous of making themselves proficient in technical knowledge and mechanical scienoe. We want a council, a college, and a model mine, and a legalised system of apprenticeship to produce a class of mining experts who will command the confidence of the public, and who will apply their talents to the economical development of our unlimited stores of mineral wealth.— l am, &c, I}. M. Skimrant. Ballarat, October 21.