The kauri gum industry of the Auckland province has been deprived of its traditional and laborious methods simultaneously with the decline in exports and prices. Where gumdiggers were once able to obtain profitable quantities of goodquality gum simply by probing the ground with a primitive spear, mechanical steam shovels are now used to secure every particle. Alore often than not, the modern workers who use shovels have to be with gum of the poorest quality — sooge mooge ” it is called in the distinctive language of the gumfields. They f°Uunate if they have as a return £2O a ton, though the average price for kauri gum to-day is above £5O.
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Otago Witness, Issue 4028, 26 May 1931, Page 79
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109Untitled Otago Witness, Issue 4028, 26 May 1931, Page 79
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