THE RUIN OF COBAR.

Taihape Daily Times, 17 April 1919, Page 7

THE RUIN OF COBAR.

COPPER MINES CLOSED

THOUSANDS THROWN iBLI

SYDNEY, April 4.

The mining town of Cobar, a place of 5000 people, lias suffered calamity as tie result of tie slump in copper. The Australian production of copper cannot be sold, owing to the huge accumulation of the metal in England, and the smelting works and mines have" been suddenly closed. There was nothing else to be done. The Government thought of keeping the mines going for a while, but the future of the copper appeared so gloomy that it dared not take the risk. 'Therefore, many thousands of men are idle. Cobar, away out towards the Barling, 464 miles from Sydney, and the terminus of a railway, is surrounded with rich copper deposits, and absolutely lives on the copper industry, yjnlcss the mines re-open, the town, built in what is almost a desert, must simply disappear. To show how close is its connection with mining, it may be mentioned that, as soon as the mines closed, the Government bad to open relief depots there, otherwise a large section of the population would have starved. Many hundreds of people

are now being maintained there by the Government, and the number is in-

creasing daily. Tt as a most (difficult and awkward problem. The Government announces this week that it can find employment for 1500 men and women elsewhere, mostly on the railways, tramways, and in coal mines, and that it will grant them free railway passes to ether places.

But it is the loss of money invested in Cobar that is the most serious aspect. The Government, for instance, built 80 miles of railway to connect Cobar with the B'urke line, and an elaborate scheme of electric lighting lias just been completed. One lias only to estimate the amount of public and private wealth invested in a town like Oaniaru, for instance, to get an idea of the calamity that has overtaken Cobar. It is said that the Cobar people arc stunned, and do not know what to do. They have made frantic appeals to the State Government for assistance—but what can the State Government do that it is not already doing?