AN ALARMING PROSPECT.

Wairarapa Age, Volume XXXI, Issue 9030, 17 January 1908, Page 4

AN ALARMING PROSPECT.

It will be a bad look-out for West Australia if ever its prinicpal mines "peter out," for its prosperity is almost entirely due to the mining industry. It was the discovery of gold that.brought in population, and the progress of what may be called the mid-section of the State has been caused by the success of the great mines in and around Kalgoorlie. Yet there appears to be a prospect of a, failure of these mines, if such an' authority as Mr Hermann, chairman of the Associated Blocks?, js to be credited —and it is hardly to be supposed he would decry without cause the industry with which he is so intif mately associated. A'cablegram published to-day states that Mr Hermann, at a meeting of the company in London, declared that "so far as he could see all the producing mines were approaching their end." The statement is a very grave one, and its seriousness is emphasised by the suggestion of Mr Hermann that the West Australian Government should devote from £IOO,OOO to £2#o,flOO towards testing and exploring the Kalgoorlie dl&trict, and his belief that; the mining companies would be only too eager to contribute. Whether the Government is likely to fall in with the suggestion may be doubted, seeing that if there i 3 a likelihood—as we believe there is—of further profitable finds the Government would naturally consider it the business of private enterprise to make the discovery. There is too much of the speculative element in the proposal to commend itself to the State, and the most that could be expected would be a reasonable subsidy for prospecting purposes. Only those who know what the colony was before BayJey's find at Coolgardie set in motion a stream of immigration from the sister States and from all parts of the world, can form any idea of the collapse which would follow the failure of the mining industry. There would be v" -exodus from the goldfield cities ar from the capital that would leave tr colony as sparsely peopled as it \vj in the year 1894. The "status qu ante Bayley-" would be reverted t< and the condition of the rtmainin inhabitants would-probably be as ba as it was when Perth was a wretche convict settlement, and the rest c the vast territory was peopled b aborigines and a scanty white popi lation almost devoid of trade o commerce bayond its own coasts boundaries. Let us hope the gol will not fail.