OHINEMURI.

Waikato Times, Volume XXXI, Issue 2532, 2 October 1888, Page 3

OHINEMURI.

The Pakkes Furkasck.— A preliminary canter was taken out of the Parkea furnace on Wednesday the 2(3th, rinder the personal superintendence of Mr Parkes. All the machinery is in position and worked well, cverthing going off without a hitch. Only a month's run is to be made and if financially a success, three other plants will most likely be erected. Mr Parkes is busily engaged upon a wet process which he considers suitable to our refractory ore. It seems as though this would be the end of it nil. U'e have had three different processes in this district and none of ilura have given satisfaction. The battery is, to what is desired, what the stone hoe of prehistoric times was to the steam plough. Ti.e Bailey r au process defeated its own ends, while the La Monte furnace could treat nothing under £,")0 dirt with any chance of a profit. Many are nfiaid that the present Parkes furnace will prove too expensive. It will take nearly —00 tons of coal, limestone and other fluxes to smelt about half that quantity of ore. Men, haulage, freight and labour are so extremely costly that there can be little or no margin left for profit. This latter item appears to be the secret of non-succc s.wlien we are shown aa conclusively aswe havebccn,that similar processes to those mentioned have been successful with similar ores at Home and elsewhere, we wonder why it can't be done here. The fact is that it is the cost of the labour that is the margin between profit and loss. When one considers that a first-class assayer cm be engaged at Fiieberg or Swansea for £S0 per annum, expert smelters at 20s to 2os per week, and labourers at 15?, and compare those charges with the £40 and £o0 per month paid°thc La Monte men, the heart of the matter is got at. It is an unpopular creed and a seemingly paradoxical one, hut it may be safely asserted that not until the scale of wages is permanently lowered, will the condition of the masses be raised. Because, it will not pay employers to initiate industries when it is a foregone conclusion that they will either have to pixy unprofitable wages or get comparatively cheap and nasty men who cannot do the worn. Between Scj'lla and Charybdis, it is more profitable to lock your money in a strong box and await developments. Smabt Pkc;c:in'(! off.—The mantle of Maiitoto appears to have descended upon Waitekauri, which has recently been the scene of much pegging out. An interesting ease was beard before the Warden on the Thames last week, when the way large holdings are obtained by false pretences came out. After the Mariposa claim of 20 acres hail been granted two persons, vho had evidently been in partnership with the owners of the Mariposa, applied for the surplus ground, which was no less than 50 acres. The warden remarked that for a man to peg out 70 acres for 20 was something more than an error. lie said that if persons could peg out large areas, take what they wanted out of it, and lay their friends on for the balance, only one man could take up the whole peninsula. Eventually he threw the surplus ground back into the goldfield, when it was immediately repegged by several parties. Makitoto. —Matters at Maritoto do not look promising. If 1000 tons of payable ore are obtained, a plant will be erected. "There is much virtue in an if."