Tuapeka Times. AND GOLDFIELDS REPORTER AND ADVERTISER. "MEASURES NOT MEN." LAWRENCE: SATURDAY, 28th SEP., 1901. THE DREDGING INDUSTRY.

Tuapeka Times, Volume XXXIV, Issue 4895, 28 September 1901, Page 2

Tuapeka Times. AND GOLDFIELDS REPORTER AND ADVERTISER. " MEASURES NOT MEN." LAWRENCE: SATURDAY, 28th SEP., 1901. THE DREDGING INDUSTRY.

It would be entirely wrong to say that the potentialities of the dredging industry either as a field for legitimate and prudent investment or as a source of national wealth have been many degree diminished by such facts, melancholy though they may largely be, as the experiences C-f til© last year or two bave revealed. There are, doubtless, many people who will refuse to accept this statement. But it is nevertheless fundamentally true. When we speak of the dredging industry as a safe and profitable field of investment tbe statement is, of course, accompanied by the assumption that the precautions and safeguards usually adopted in all other business and commercial enterprises are brought into effective requisition. Aa a field for stock exchange gambling the industry, it should be manifest, no longer exists, but as an industry to be studied . and operated on approved business principles, it providbs the solid basis of great individual and . national wealth. But many of tbe ideals and moßt of the theories associated with the industry when it first began to take stupendous and glorified form in the public mind have disappeared. It is unnecessary to refer to these specifically. They were the outcome largely of a distempered and unhealthy state of tbe public mind wkicL threw ordinary prudence and < caution to the winds and accepted without a particle of confirmatory proof the wildest and most improbable schemes of wealth. To all this disillusionment has come, as it invariably does, in very bitter and remorseless form and the heavy toll is still being paid and is likely to be demanded for some time to come. It is now unnecessary to refer to the means by which this class of people were deceived and led into foolhardy enterprises. Everybody is familiar;with the part the " promoter " has played in the many shameful swindles that have given the boom such a bad notoriety ; though it must be said that the victims of these frauds have in most instances only themselves to blame for whatever unfortunate ex. periences they have been made acquainted with. But all this is now fast becoming ancient history and, as we have already said, it has no bearing whatever on the dredging industry as a means of determining its productiveness. Apart from such causes of loss and failure as we have been referring to the utter helplessness of our engineering

firms in tbe face of the physical conditions which have arisen as the industry developed has been and is one of the most fertile causes of loss and disappointment. Swindling and mismanagement have done their share in discrediting the industry, but the incompetence and blunders of engineers, even in circumstances where the conditions were of the ordinary kind and should be more or less familiar to them, must not be left out of tb.9 reckoning in any general indictment that may be made. With the very considerable experience of river dredging they have had it should be reasonable to suppose they would have undertaken the work of mechanical construction armed with a more thorough and comprehensive knowledge of tbe difficulties that were to be encountered. In this respect they have shown themselves to havo been lamentably deficient, with the result that we have seen dredges placed upon river claims on which they pottered about for weeks and months, eating up the capital of the company until eventually nothing was left but liquidation and tbe abandonment of the claim. The usual formula under such circumstances was that " the gold was there but the dredge couldn't bottom." That, or something else, equally unsatisfactory but plainly pointing to the fact that failure was due to the unfitness of the dredge to successfully meet the requirements demanded of her.

The dredging industry cannot be said to be on anything like a satisfactory basis as long as the suspension of operations follow every slight change in rise

or flow of the river and uDtil such

dredges are constructed as are able to work without frequent stoppages from alight and shadow causes, every part of both, the Molyneux and Kawarau rivers as well as the deep gold-bearing flats wherever they may be. Possibly this may be too large an undertaking for local enterprise and may demand the presence of outside capital However this may be it is evident tbat much more powerful dredges than those we are at present acquainted with will

have to be devised to overcome the

I physical difficulties that have so far, I speaking generally, only allowed dredg- \ ing to become a partial success and in

many instnees have emphatically stamped it with failure. Not only are larger and more powerful dredges demanded, but they mast be accompanied by radical structural changes in design and by corresponding improvements in the present methods of goldsaving which are entirely inadequate and defective.- Circumstances will compel these changes and when they have been accomplished, or rather by the time they have been accomplished, the industry will have acquired a solid and stable basis as a permanent and valuable national industry.