KAURI GUM MARKET

Taranaki Daily News, Volume LIII, Issue 179, 8 November 1910, Page 2

KAURI GUM MARKET

i ;—; '• ENTIRELY DEAD." By Telegraph.—Press Association. J Auckland, Monday. In the course of an interview with a North Auckland Times reporter, Mr. Dell manager of Harding and Co.'s Northern Wairoa gum business, states that the market is entirely dead. Middlemen in Auckland will not touch kauri gum, the chief reason being the depression in America. To show how bad things are, he stated that last week he bought gum at 70s, which last year he paid 120s for, and even at this reduced figure he cannot get an offer for it in Auckland. An- . other serious nienace is the substitute of kauri gum in the ; shape of South American and South African gums and China oil. Manufacturers prefer kauri gum, but if they cannot' get it &i a priee- they use substitutes, , Referring to the layers of unrecovered' gum ..at considerable depths, Mr. Dell said that there was no reason to doubt that gum, and very good gum, might be found in a low stratum, but he did not think it would pay to recover it from great depths. It was not like gold. He very much doubted whether there were five hundred British diggers all told on the Hvh'ole of the fields, and he considered it-only a matter of time when there would be none at all. British diggers did not work systematically like the Austrians', and they simply could not make a living as prices now are - " u *t),4J i ii i hi ii.