THE CONDITION OF AUCKLAND.

Westport Times, Volume IV, Issue 642, 7 April 1870, Page 2

THE CONDITION OF AUCKLAND.

A private correspondent of a Westport resident, writing upon the flax manufacture, gives a very dispiriting account of Auckland. The writer says:—" People here who have money have gone heavily into the flax business since tho bursting of the Thames bubble. It was formerly quartz on the brain, now it is flax. Every available site is taken up throughout the'country, and I am under the impression it will be overdone. You say in your letter that the machinery would cost about .C 750. We up here can do it for much less. Flax-dressing machines connected to a water-wheel or driven by steam would cost about ,£75; with steam power complete about ,£3OO. Wages are very low here; for flax-cutters, from 20s to 25s per week, they finding themselves; and plenty of hands to be obtained at that figure. Auckland and its surroundings are, without exception, the poorest places lever came across in my travels. The southern papers, speaking of the destitution on the Thames, glibly recommend the miners to leave and go south. Hundreds of the poor fellows have not the means to pay for a week's food, and how they exist is a perfect riddle to the uninitiated. The misery and destitution respecting which you, no doubt, have read, is not exaggerated but is understated. As I have previously said, the 5 cwt. of stone sent here from Nelson for trial crushing has not a speck of gold in it. Hundreds were awaiting the result, which was received with much dissatisfaction, but I think if the discovery of quartz with gold in it would be likely to lead to a repetition in Nelson of what the population have endured w., r *"i- may bo thankful that the stone yielded notmng.'"