OLD IRISH COPPER MINES

Hokitika Guardian, 18 May 1929, Page 6

OLD IRISH COPPER MINES

TORE REOPENED. In medieval times Irish metal work . .ors used to make beautiful ornaments 1 •from native copper, but when rich i veins of ore’were discovered in the New. > World the mines were abandoned. »' ; Tkis age of electricity and automobiles has found a< Hlmus&nd .pew,; i ncfustr ial jahes j for copper, and demand is Outstripping, the world’s supplies. Copper prices are advancing daily "in-New iY.ork and: I oednn, stimulating a search for new I supplies of ore. Under these circumstances an Anglo-'; i American syndicate is preparing to reopen some of the Irish mines.. They : are beginning operations at the longdeserted Canary mine in the Wicklow hills, and expeef: to be employing a thousand men by the end of this year. Modern methods will be used to extract the metal from the thousands of tons of low-grade ores regarded as worthless for .smelting by fonner exploiters of the mine. Those ores also contain lead, silver and traces of gold, hut if any fortunes are to he made out of the Wicklow hills they will have their basis in the -red metal indispensable to modern industry. THE “SECRET OF THE UNIVERSE.” “The physical secret of the universe, if it could be discovered —in fact, the notion of such a discovery is meaningless—would be useless to us; for to the pure intelligence’ which alone can contemplate the pure mathematical dialefics in which modern physics culminates, the useful is not a relevant category, and in so far as that mathematical dialetic has practical consequences—as, for example, if it cnablgd ns to liberate And control the energy of the atom—those practical conseouonces would merely enlarge the field of possible problems for man as a moral being. Morality would be confronted with new problems, though fortunately not with problems of a new kind. The secret of the universe is a silly phrase; but if it be taken in its common implication as meaning some knowledge of universal applicar: ~n ' v knowing which man will find the fundamental problems of life sim-

"-,1 solved, tlie secret of the universe is necessarily to be sought m m.-rali’ty—a ml. for most of those who •mV like'v to occupy themselves with tlm nroblom at the present time, in a morality purified of traditional superMr Middleton Murry in the ‘ New Adelphi.”