The Taihape Daily Times AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE. THURSDAY, MARCH 25, 1915. SAWMILLING REFUSE.

Taihape Daily Times, Volume 7, Issue 172, 25 March 1915, Page 4

The Taihape Daily Times AND WAIMARINO ADVOCATE.

THURSDAY, MARCH 25, 1915. SAWMILLING REFUSE.

(With which is incorporated The Tajhapo Post r ia a Waimarlao News.)

In the past the would-be New Zealand manufacturer has lacked the enterprise to assure success from the first, and it is notable that we have allowed some of our natural advantages and possessions to be exploited by foreign trading companies. Our Canadian brethren came over here, saw the possibilities of the White Island sulphur springs, formed a company, and have even since enjoyed the enviable emoluments therefrom. The State is offering large bonuses to induce someone to start an ironmaking industry, bui it is quite on the cards that it will be a foreign company that will eventually earn them. For years the Press pointed out the possibilities that lay in the forests we are wasting for paper pulp making, but worse than nothing lias been done up to the present, and it is quite refreshing to learn from Hokitika that a factory is to be started for converting our timber waste into paper and other products. There is untold wealth, millions of pounds’ worth of good raw material, rotting or going up in smoke in this country. In every sawmilling locality thousands of pounds are being sacrificed in the sawdust and other waste now being thrown away; sawdust heaps, slab heaps, log end collections, are valuable commodities lying unused and decaying before our eyes because we have not the initiative, and enterprise to turn them into gold. What was possible in Canada is jnst as possible here; it was British labour that had to he employed as it will have to be employed here; but the fact is we had easier ways of making money, or ways we understood better, and we have allowed enormous waste of wealth to go on. With the establishment of paper pulp works on the West Coast of the South Island there will necessarily follow the production of other products which are now imported at an enormous annual expeudi-

tui'c', such as wood alcohol, potash, saccharine, and many other by-products, and we are hopeful that Hokitika will provide this district with an object lesson mat can be turned to considerable adJ vantage. There are yet millions i of-money in (he sawmill refuse, 1 lives I hat are •valueless to sawninI levs, stumps and other timber ) waste in the territory f rom Taihape to Taumarunui that may yet be turned to account, and those who have any close connection with the timber milling* industry mi ay be well repaid for giving a close watch to the proceedings which have been set afoot in the neighbourhood of Hokitika.