NEWS FROM THE MINES

Observer, Volume XXIX, Issue 44, 17 July 1909, Page 2

NEWS FROM THE MINES

Undesirable Exaggeration

FOR the benefit of the uninitiated, and of those who have pot yet

cut their eye-teeth in mining speculation, it would be as well if someone were to compile and publish a dictionary giving definitions of current mining ternis. Of course, no one is likely to do anything of the kind. The people competent to undertake the job are too busily engaged in their own speculations on the Stock Exchange, and also too much interested in attracting the outside moth to the scrip-gamble candle, to be inclined to provide that moth with means of protecting his wings against being singed. The nioth must look after himself. But in the absence of some reliable lexicon, which those who issue mining bulletins oould be expected to follow, it is not too much to ask that the newspapers, which profess to have at heart the interests of the general public, as distinguished from the gambling boomster, should inform themselves as to the true signification of mining terms, and avoid the use of exciting language except when there are reasonable grounds for its employment.

But the " Herald " and the "Star" do not in such matters exercise reasonable journalistic discretion. Take as an example the

way in which both were harping: last week upon the phrase " run of gold " m connection with the Waiotahi and May Queen mines. TheWaiotahi oompany, in. working towards the Moanatairi section of tiie May Queen, had come upon visiblegold in a tributary leader of their main reef. On the strength of ono or two hauls of picked stone, Waio T tahi shares rose to double their prieeeof a day or two earlier* Very properly, the May Queen /directora, finding that this goldbearing leader was not far from their boundary,, determined to set about working it within their own ground. Decidedly, the fact that the country was proved to be gold-bearing warranted thestep. Where there was gold in thebranch leader there was no telling, what might later develop in the main lode. The steps taken by the company were in their shareholders' interests.

It is, however, in the form iru which the decision was made known. to the public that the inflammatory aotion comes in. Apparently, someone at the May Queen directors' meeting spoke of the promising new find in the Waiotahi as a " run of gold." Whether the term really was used there or not is immaterial^ If it was, it may have been used. ioosely, or, on the other hand, it may have been uttered with an eye to the effect upon the market. In either case, the '" Star " and " Herald " ought to have known better than perpetuate it. Their duty to the public was to interpret the position as it actually stood, and not to set the province aflame by the use of exaggerated terms. Totaik of 70 or 801 bof picked stone, the quantity on hand at the time, as constituting a "run of gold," was wild and misleading to an almost ludicrous degree. Before a goldfind oan correctly described as a "run" it needs to have yielded a good many thousand ounces of bullion, and to present prospects of a considerable continuance of the deposit.

But either in carelessness, or witba desire for sensationalism, both the papers announced the May Queen's intention to seek for the alleged, "run." The " Herald " even prefixed to its article the bold headline " Going for the Waiotahi Bun." Now, there was really no Waiotahi- " run "at the moment. All that the Waiotahi had found was a couple of parcels of picked stone. The big., patch upon which the Waiotahi company was working up to last year was. properly termed a "run" of gold, because it ran through the reef" for a considerable depth and length. That is the only "Waiotahi run" that was ever known, in the correct senseof the term, and it is a thing of the past. If the employment of theterm meant anything at all it could only imply that the May Queen company had some chance of picking, up a continuation of that rich patch, and were going to make the effort. But seeing that the workings of today are some 300 feet distant from the big patch, any allusion to the Waiotahi run could only tend to mislead the misinformed, and tempt them into the sharemarket.

Everybody interested in the prosperity of the Thames goldfield and of the province will heartily wish the Waiotahi and May Queen the best of good fortune in picking up as many runs of gold as may be within their reach. It is, indeed, quite possible that the hauls of picked stone near the Waiotahi boundary may prove tobe the forerunner of the discovery of" something important that will benefit the shareholders of both oompanies. That, however, is not the point. The plain fact is that at the time when the May Queen directors, or the newspapers, or both, were talking so eliblv about a run of gold there was in sight nothing that warranted the use of such exaggerated and alluring terms. The public are entitled to expect that things shall be called by their right names, and especially that small mining geese shall not be magnified by newspapers and in mining reports until they appear to be graceful swans.