DEVELOPING RESOUECES

Rotorua Morning Post, Volume 2, Issue 298, 11 August 1932, Page 4

DEVELOPING RESOUECES

Although much may be gained by the decisions reached at Ottawa, New Zealand still will have to rely upon a large measure of self-help if she is to attain reasonable progress and the restoration of prosperity. Dr. Marsden, director of Scientifie Research in the Department of Industry and Commerce, stated the position excellently the other day when he said that the real problem is to get all our employable people working usefully on worthwhile industry, and to find new and extended uses for labour with every known economical method of applying it for most efficient production. The department over which Dr. Marsden presides is performing very valuable work in searching out and investigating new avenues for employment, new industrial processes, and means of stimulating production in various existing industries. The doctor, we take it from the tenor of his remarks, is by no means pessimistic regarding the future of New Zealand. He knows ' something of its great natural | resources, still untapped or only i partly developed ,and he sees opj portunities awaiting enterprise and industry in many directions. In regard to our mineral wealth he tells us that the surface only has been scratched ; that geoloi gists are confident there is room j for enormous expansion in gold- | mining. In 80 years, mainly by ' surface mining and by comparatively small-scale methods, £90,000,000 worth of gold has been ; won from the earth, and if so much couid be found on or near i the surface, he asks, what may j not be below? Several projects are under way, he declares, which, with modern methods, give hope that there may be developed in a few years an output valued at several million pounds per annum and employing a large quantity of labour. Science, we know, has made wonderful strides in metallurgical researeh and the mechanism of mining I has also improved to a wonder- : ful degree, so that it is possible now to work areas which formerly were not considered worthy of development, as also to delve deeper into the earth in search of minerals hitherto considered to be beyond the reach of the prospector. Most geologists, he declares, are confident that the chances of finding payable flows of oil in quantity in New Zea- . land are good, in spite of the legend about the country being too broken up. The need is for thorough geological surveys, modern methods of prospecting, and organised search by competent people.