LICENSED HOLDINGS.

Pelorus Guardian and Miners' Advocate., Volume 9, Issue 80, 7 October 1898, Page 2

LICENSED HOLDINGS.

TO THS EDITOR. : Snt, —I have purposely waited to see if any of your correspondents on the subject of Licensed Holdings, which has lately been discussed through your columns, would state 'a case in reference to the labour clauses of the Mining Act being ignored, but, as one and all of them appear only to have written in general terms of disapproval of claims being pegged and held for an indefinite period by needy speculators, without any intention of complying with the labour clauses of the Act, it is left for me to show another side of this much-talked-of grievance—namely, the determined defiance of the said labour clauses on the part of the large sluicing companies who are working their claims in the Wakamarina. Immediately, below the preamble of the Mining Act, 1891, the interpretation of special claim is “ a claim of greater area and of irre* gular form, granted by the Wardeh eqbject fo ispeci&l teri&s ahd pondi r : tiohs.’’ Now, the conditions aiop shown in the same Act, under subsection a ot section'll, aa foUo«»>->

“That the licensee shall carry on mining operations in an efficient and workmanlike manner, and shall employ in such operations at least so many men, being able and competent workmen or miners as shall he prescribed by this Act or by regulations.” And under sub-section cl, part 1, of the regulations relating to licensed holdings and special claims, the following: —“ Provided also that he or they (the said licensee or licensees) his or their executors, administrators, or assigns, will and shall at all times during the continuance of the license or grant, employ in or about the mines and premises hereby held as a licensed holding or special claim, a number of men being for the first two years after the issue of such license in the proportion of not less than one man to every full area of three acres of the lands hereby held, and for the remainder of the term of such license one man to the area of every two acres, or the number of men mentioned in such license.” I must now quote section 32 of the Act—namely , “ Any number of miners' rights may be issued to any person applying for the same, and the holder of such miners’ rights shall be entitled to oCcupy, either separately or conjointly, a corresponding number of claims : Provided that in respect of each claim in the number of claims so ; taken up there shall be employed at least one man.” Now, Sir, I want you to see the unfairness of things as they exist in the Wakamarina. The latter quotation distinctly shows that the individual miner who can only peg his hundred square feet to the claim would, in case of taking out, say, ten miners rights, have to put ten men on the ten claims, which he would thereby be entitled to-—in all a thousand square feet; while a Company, who takes up thirty acres, has only to employ the same number of men for the full area of their claim for the first two years, and fifteen men for the remainder of their term of license, and yet, Sir, they do not even do this, but go on working their thirty-acre claims with only one man and a boy, as in the case of the Yukon and the All Nations sluicing companies in the Wakamarina at the present time. As a miner, J have the right to ask (paradox as it may seem) whether the Mining Act, with all its regulations and amendments, is buried in the Wakamarina, while it is allowed to live an act in all other parts of the Colony? Yours, &c., T. H. Fbbeman. Sunnyside, Wakamarina.