The Southland Times PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING. Luceo Non Uro. TUESDAY, 22ND OCTOBER, 1901 STATE COAL MINES.

Southland Times, Issue 15075, 22 October 1901, Page 2

The Southland Times PUBLISHED EVERY MORNING. Luceo Non Uro. TUESDAY, 22ND OCTOBER, 1901 STATE COAL MINES.

The outline of the State Coal Mines Bill telegraphed by our Parliamentary reporter and published yesterday morning was quite full enough to show that the measure is far-reaching and in some respects remarkable. The bill begins, of course, with the ordinary provision empowering the Governor to set apart any unalienated Crown lands which are beliered to contain coal, or are required for coalmining operations under the Act. The next clause is the first remarkable feature of the bill. " A land board or any other i authority charged with the disposal of Crown land must, before disposing of it, ascertain whether it contains coal, and if it does the fact must be reported to the Governor, and without his consent it must not be disposed of." This is a clause which seems to us to bristle with difficulties. To compel land boards to prospect every portion of land for coal before they lease or sell it is to set them a task which they can never perform. What is meant by ascertaining if a piece of land contains coaU Does it mean coal that would pay to work, or any coal at all? To prohibit the sale of land except for the reason that it was a profitable coal area would be absurd, and yet to ascertain whether a coal deposit will pay to work is perhaps the most difficult and costly undertaking which New Zealand can provide. How much money, for instance, has been sunk, and fruitlessly sunk, in trying to find payable coal within a radios of 40 miles from Inrercargill ? The traces of coal, and even coal in quantities are not difficult to find; but finding coal is one thing, and finding a profitable coal mine is another. Supposing that such an Act as that which it is now proposed to pass had come into operation 50 years ago then, are we to ,

suppose that the Government would either have prohibited the disposition of all coal-bearing land within the 40 miles radiua from Invercargill, or expended uselessly all the money which private speculators have lost in exploiting these fields? In either case the Government would have done a foolish and unjustifiable thing, and yet the passing of this bill will put the Government in the same dilemma. Whenever any coal is found upon land the Crown will either have to prevent its acquisition by the settler, or risk large sums of public money in the experiment of finding out whether it is worth while digging the coal out or not. Further, the experiment would be carried out with money raised by taxation, and why should the people of Auckland pay the cost of ascertaining the value or worthlessness of the Waikawa field, or why should the people of Southland be asked to lose a few thousand pounds on Hikurangi 6eld 1 The clause on examination appears to be preposterous and unworkable. The bill then proceeds to equip the Minister with all the requirements of the business of coalmining iv all its branches — staffs, machinery, dealing, and capital. The concluding clause lays down the law with regard to the keeping of accounts and the disposal of profits. " Any surplus profits are to be applied in establishing a sinking fund." "If the profits exceed 5 per cent, the price of coal may be reduced in the following year." Although absolutely necessary in a bill of the kind, these two concluding sentences of our correspondent's summary of the bill are not a little humorous. They savour so strongly of the allocation of profits, which is always so con spicuous in mining prospectuses by reason of black type, and in mining balance sheets — by absence. In the light of the coal mining history of New Zealand a 5 per cent, profit is a pale and distant vision. As was shown in the brief review of the working coal mines of the colony which we gave in this column some time ago, there is not one pit of any size in the colony (excluding the Kaitangata mine) which has paid five per cent, annually upon the money invested. The tale of New Zealand coal mining is a tale of difliculty, defeat and loss for the most part. And that is not to be wondered at, since the Coal Mines Commission, set up by the Government, sent in its report. There are two paragraphs in that report that should cause hesitation to any company or government which , proposes to t>egin the business of coalmining. One is : " tha coalfields of New Zealand have confounded all the previous knowledge of professed experts, and the conclusions drawn from data as to quantity have been already proved misleading and fallacious." And the other is : "It is a most regrettable fact that, owing to faults, a vast quantity of coal must be left until the price of coal has, through scarcity of supply, risen to almost famine prices and thus made it remunerative to work." We have here an eloquent and presumably expert criticism of the clauses in the Coal Mines Bill which refer to the testing of fields and the disposal of profits. We see no attempt made in the bill to provide out of profits for the expenses incurred by land boards in ascertaining whether land under their administration contains coal. In fact we see nothing in the bill which betrays an earnest and comprehensive effort on the part of the Governmont to set the scheme of State coal mines afoot. The measure which has made its tardy appearance is more full of faults than the coal fields of New Zealand. It is so imperfect, so unworkable, and so incomplete that it will not get beyond the committee stage this session, if it gets so far.