Greymouth Evening Star, AND BRUNNERTON ADVOCATE. TUESDAY, MARCH 5, 1901. BESMIRCHING THE COAST.

Greymouth Evening Star, Volume XXXI, 5 March 1901, Page 2

Greymouth Evening Star, AND BRUNNERTON ADVOCATE. TUESDAY, MARCH 5, 1901. BESMIRCHING THE COAST.

The West Coast must be a very bad place, and contain an extraordinarily large proportion of very bad men, if ali we read about the locality and its inhabitants in some of the New Zealand papers is true. The Wellington Post led off the attack some time ago, and now the Fo!oy's salting case is bringing down a blast of virtuous indignation upon us. Christchurch Truth the other day, in dealing with the matter, declares that " investors havo always had an uneasy feeling regarding the West Coast, and it has been said that if it required seven Jews to outwit an Armenian, it needed seven Armenians to get the better of a West Coaster. Possibly, this is a libel on a modest and unassuming community which numbers Mr Seddon amongst its representatives, but there can bo no doubt the feeling existed. It was strengthened by the discovery ! of the salting of Foley's Croek_and the rumours that other claims were not quite up to the sample. This is the more unfortunate, because it has had the effect of keeping out the cautious capitalist, who would otherwise have assisted in the development of the industry." In view of the fact that the swindle was exposed by West Coast men, and the expenses of the prosecution borne out of their private pockets, the above insinuation is an unjust and ungenerous one. Why term the West Coast a land of sharpers because two men have been convicted ? As justly might the whole of the people of Christchurch be twitted with immorality because ex-Judge

Martin chose to run away with an-1 other man's wife. Then Wo go to Dunedin—that delightful city that never knew the mismanagement of an insurance company or the bursting of a mining bubble—and we find the Mining and Engineering Journal sadly moralising upon our iniquity as follows :—" Rightly or wrongly the Coast has been looked upon as the hunting ground of those who considered that smart practice was good business. There is no doubt at all that in by-gone days many quartz mines were worked not to keep the returns regular, but to alternate periods of good and bad returns. By so doing, those in the know bought up before the good stone was turned on, and sold out before it was turned off. Should the public ever again take to dealing in quarts; shares it is possible that a West Coast jury might be asked to consider the matter. That it was done in the past is certain, and the perpetrators, men trusted to work the mine for the best advantage of the shareholders, were just as culpablo as j the Lawsons." A very strong charge is made by our contemporary ; so strong, indeed, that a direct one should follow. If our contemporary knows of such nefarious practices as mentioned and does not expose them, he lays himself open to the imputation of having formulated a libel upon honest peope, or else of not having the moral courage to state the whole truth and stand by the consequences. For ourselves we do not hesitate to express our disbelief in the charge that many quartz mines were worked as described by the Mining Journal. His bespattering of a community because of the crimes of one or two individual is becoming tiresome, and by way of rejoinder let us declare and challenge any locality in the colony to gainsay the statement, that proportionate to population there is less crime on the Coast than in any other part of New Zealand.