THE GOLDMINING INDUSTRY.

Kumara Times, Issue 3052, 14 August 1886, Page 3

THE GOLDMINING INDUSTRY.

IS IT A BENEFIT TO THE COLONY. The Wellington correspondent of the Auckland Herald writes : Your readers, I doubt not, will feel interested in a very lively passage of arms (in the Parliamentary sense) which has taken pl.ice upon the Mjning Bill, between the Hon. Dr. Pollen and HqUj Mr Lahmann. The argument

arose out of the proposal to reduce the miners' right fees. Dr. Pollen argued that the goldmining industry was in no sense an industry which contributed to the prosperity of the colony. He affirmed that every ounce of gold obtained cost three times the value of it, that goldmining was wasteful, that it encouraged a kind of public immorality and gambling that was eating into the heart of the public. He said that many a family was bleeding to the core in order to find the money to keep up this industry. These mining communities were for ever seeking public money for water-races, and for large public works connected with mining, which expenditure was exhausting the resources of the country. These strictures upon the gold-mining industry brought into the members' gallery a large namber of the goldfields members. The Hon. Mr Labmann assured the Council that the miner was independent in the same sense that any other colonist who worked for his living was. He had as good a right to ask for assistance for the exercise of his industry as any other member of the industrial classes. Other classes asked for bridges, roads, surveys, railways; why should the miner be refused assistance. The miner did not come to the Assembly to beg any more than the agriculturist or the manufacturer. If the Hon. Dr. Pollen would reflect upon the immense value of the gold export and the credit it had given to the colonies that hon. gentleman would not have made such an attack upou the goldmining industry. It was but fair to judge of goldmining as any commercial man would have judged of any other woik or enterprise by the assets which it created. What would the West Coast of New Zealand have been without mining? That industry had opened up the whole of that country. It not only opened land, but created maikets and established permanent settlements. Both speeches were good. Dr. Pollen had the greater advantage of style and finish, but the Hon. Mr Lahmann created an excellent impression, although he speaks with a strong German accent.