MINING.

Otago Witness, Issue 1957, 27 August 1891, Page 14

MINING.

THE BLUE SPUR CONSOLIDATED COMPANY.

- The Mining World and Engineering Record contains a full account of the meeting of this company held in June last, and in addition makes the following comments in its editorial columns ;— THE) SATISFACTOBY MBBTING OP BLUB SPUB AND

GABBIEI/8 GULLY.

It is always with extreme pleasure that we refer to any concern which, after having surmounted the ills to which mining, like flesh, is heir, has decidedly turned thn corner. Wo referred to several such enterprises last week, but at that time the facts connected with Bine Spur and Gabriel's Gully were not within our knowledge, or we should decidedly have included it in the Hat. The directors, with Sir John Stokes at their head, have been, so far as thia company is concerned, figuratively fighting for dear life. They have not always received from the shareholders the sympathy they deserved, whilst in the colony they have in certain quarters been met with the most determined opposition. This opposition has even gone the length of removing their materials from the mine and " stacking them elsewhere. The winter of their discontent has happily now passed, and though the summer has not yet been made glorious, the chairman can see daylight through the clouds for the ficst time in the company's history. Blue Spur and Gabriel's Gully appears to be on tbe threshold of substantial snocess. For the first five months of the present year, under considerable difficulties (particularly in January), the manager has made returns of gold equal to £6505, and the expenses being only some £300 per month, the shareholders may regard the net profit as about £5000. Remittances are on their way Home (hitherto in the experience of Blue Spur and Gabriel's Gully tho remittances have been the other way), and a dividend will be paid in all probability to the preference shareholders in July. Later on the ordinary shareholders, Sir John Stokes hinted, will be in the running, and then all interested will be participating in the prosperity of a concern which but for the delicate handling of the board and their most skilful piloting must certainly have been on the rocks. We heartily congratulate the directors on this happy issue out of all their troubles in connection with this company, and commend the good example they have set to the directors of- other concerns which may be in similar difficulties, but which peradventure may be extricated from them by management of a similar kiod,