The Decline of Mining.

Cromwell Argus, Volume V, Issue 265, 8 December 1874, Page 7

The Decline of Mining.

(Melbourne Argus, Nov. 7. ) The decline of mining is a subject which is attracting the attention of many of our country contemporaries at the present time, but, so far, they do not seem to be able to give anything like a clear explanation of the causes of decay. Some of them, we think, are looking toq far away, whilst others confine their attention to calling upon the Government to do something—that familiar cry of the argumentatively destitute. From inquiries which we have made, somewhat wide in their range, we are disposed to think that the decay of mining as an industry in this Colony is due to a number of causes, the chief, one being the gradual but sure decrease in the quantity of gold readily obtainable. A little consideration will show that this is the true state of the case. Whatever views may be held as to the distribution of gold in quarts lodes, it is impossible to deny the fact that a large number of our lodes which were at one time extremely rich have been abandoned because they cannot be made to pay. Fortunes were made by quartz-mining in places which are now wholly or partially deserted, and the lodes were, as a matter of fact, Worked out. The gold did not go down with the quartz, or at all events the lodes did not pay for working as the depth increased. There are many more examples of this than most people suppose, and it is easy enough to see that raining must decline just in proportion as the field of adventures becomes more limited and less rich. It is quite true there is no discoverable rules by which to connect yields With depths, hut neither can it be denied that hundreds of quartz lodes which once paid have been abandoned, and only for one reason, because they could not be made to pay any longer. Untold riches may remain in these lodes still, but who is going to look for them 1 There is a sort of tradition amongst miners, that if capitalists could only be induced to take up these

abandoned lodes, they could be made to pay well j but the miners take care not to back their own opinions with their own money, hut 'prefer very much to Call upon other folks to risk theirs. The alluvial ground is, of course, worked out in most places, and no longer finds employment for thousands of men. Exhausted alluvium and a restricted area of quartz must necessarily greatly reduce the number of miners at work, and bring about that gradual decline about which so many complaints are now heard. But the point rather seems to be that mining has declined to a greater degree than the exhaustion of the auriferous ma terial warrants. The goldfields are not only dull, but duller than they ought to be. The assumption is that something is wrong somewhere, and that that something can be removed if we can only find out what it is. To this end the Government is asked to step in and try to put matters right, which is about as hopeless a proposition as we have heard for- some time, though we have some curious claims made in this Colony. The fact is that mining mainly requires to be severely let alone. The auriferous, like the agricultural land, is getting locked up, chiefly through the non-enforcement of what is understood to be the law. We warn, too, those who expect a revival of mining from a mining on private property law, to be prepared for a disappointment, urgent as we deem such a law to be. The truth is that, so far as the decline in raining as an industry is unnatural —greater than tire condition of the natural objects of the industry warrants—it is the result of over-legislation or bad and expensive management. The manager of one company at Sandhurst estimates that £6OO a year is taken in the shape of duties; another non-dividend company pays £250 a year in the same way 5 and one large quartz company consumes over £4OOO worth of dutiable articles annually. These are examples of over-legislation for 1 native industry, to which must be added the legislation which allows the auriferous lands to be shepherded under mining leases. Bad management is, of course, expensive management, and both result from the general carelessness of sharenolders, and in their simple faith in mining managers. The money squandered annually in utterly useless and expensive works is something enormous, and the cost of working is, in many cases, quite out of proportion to the results obtained. It is the small things which make success or failure. Attention to details will often change a loss to a gain, calls to dividends, and all, perhaps, through the supervision of one man. To all this must be added what we must call dis honesty-, which includes concealment of the truth, and the working of a few share holders for their own interest, even, sometimes, to the ruin of the general body. This is far commoner than is supposed, and has prevailed alike at wicked Ballarat and most guileless Sandhurst, as too many know to their cost. The truth is that really competent, honest mining managers are very scarce. Ignorant men, yet confident (as most ignorant men are), have mined many a promising venture, and are at this very moment making ducks and drakes of the money of confiding call-payers in the metropolis and elsewhere. Half, or more than half of the failures are the result of bad management, and it is a fact quite well known to the experienced that a large venture, with excellent prospects, has been brought to ruin by a single incompetent man. Other moral causes also go to make up the general outcome of dullness. Work is carelessly and unfaithfully done; expenses are often twice what they need be : and the workman, when he does not steal, often takes a delight in wasting the very property which he should save. Every experienced man knows that a tribute party, which finds its own materials, can work at half the cost of men supplied by a company, and can make ground pay which was only a loss to the original shareholders. Mining could be revived to-morrow morning, if industry, care, and skill, combined with integrity, could be made the general rule, though, of course, the gold could not be made to grow in exhausted places, and old glories could not be equalled. Still, we hold that anyone who closely inquires , into the reason for the present depressed state of a great industry will find, apart from the inevitable exhaustion of the gold, many moral causes which make industry less effective and management more costly than they should or need be.