GOLD MINING.-A SUGGESTION.

Colonist, Volume XVI, Issue 1604, 4 February 1873, Page 4

GOLD MINING.-A SUGGESTION.

(From the Dunedin Star, Jail. 14.)

The report of our correspondent respecting the gold workings on the Arrow and Shotover Eivers is worthy of more than a passing notice. It tells of a rich field for labor, incompletely worked in most instances, and barely touched. The few Bhort sentences in which the story is told of the persevering and successful efforts of men almost without capital, but with full confidence in the payable character of their labor, point to a field for investment that promises rapid and rich return. There is also another suggestion which is full of significance :— "The amount of gold which leaves Qneenßtown by the monthly escort is something like 2000 ounces. Of this amount Grace's claim, Boyle's, Aspinall's at Skipper's Point, and the Chinese claims on the Big Beach, Shotover, and a few others I could name also on the Shotover, contribute—as could be proved on enquiry—about 1500 ounces. So that only^ 500 ounces arc realised among the whole of the remaining mining population here. This statement points sternly to the conclusion that individual mining does not pay on the average. But it also establishes the fact that the judicious investment of capital on the Shotover, haa yielded and would—if extensively brought to bear—realise princely fortunes to the investors, without the risks which have been found to attend fdeep sinking and quartz-mining; for it is certain that tlaims which yielded at the rate of £2000 or £3000 per man annually, like Grace's while being worked on a limited scale, would, if on a comprehensive one, with economy and the aid of engineering skill, produce the results predicted." Our correspondent points out with grest force that out of 2000 ounces of gold forwarded monthly from Queenstown, 1500 are procured from three European claims and the Chinese workings. It follows that there are some hundreds of the population of Otago laboring for the most scanty wages. This ought not to be. It is a waste of labor, and a frittering away of the public estate. The labor of those men, if the ground were worked on a system, would place them in comfortable ciroumstaaces, and yield a largely increased capital to the resources of the Province. When we say it is the duty of the Provincial Government to look to remedying this state of affairs, we shall be met with the opposition of men who deprecate all Government interference in what they are pleased to term private enterprise. So do we. So far as the men are concerned, their labor is their own, and bo long as they do not seek to live upon the earnings of other people, either by robbing or begging, we do not Bee that anybody has anything to do with it. But ifc is another question altogether, when they are dealing with gold workings. Those are really public property and when they undertake to work the ground, if they do not obtain all the gold that can be abstracted from it they are guilty of public waste. They take so muoh of it as renders the ground too poor to pay others to work for the remainder, and what they get affords them a bare living. We believe the remedy to be that, when it is proposed by any number of miners to form a company to work a claim, and to throw thares upon the market, before a mining lease is granted, the ground should besubjected to a prospect, the result of which should be certified, by a competent ogent of the Government. It would then go to the world under authority that would inspire confidence, instead of- as now, being the statements of interested parties. A still more reliable plan would be that, on application being made, the whole of the prospect should be conducted by the Government, the applicants repaying the cost. By this means a degree of confidence would be given to mining investment that, in the end, would be advantageous to every interest in the country.