The Dredging Boom.

Waimate Daily Advertiser, Volume III, Issue 132, 23 November 1901, Page 4

The Dredging Boom.

SWEEPING INDICTMENT. Mr H. E. Easton, the English investor who recently petitioned Parliament for an inquiry into the way certain dredging company were being conducted, said, in reply to a reporter of the Lyttelton Time* on Wednesday, that the condition of the industry on examination had astounded him. The colony was simply Belling its birthright. He had f mnd mismanagement, over-capitalisation, wasteful extravagance, over-loading, blundering, and fraud prevalent throughout the industryIt was the exception rather than the ru o to find a claim efficiently managed, and the industry was simply being smothered in the interests of men who were waiting a chance to step in when the panic they had created had reached its climax, and profit by the reconstruction of companies which were needlessly being forced into liquidation. The indusiry, he was satisfied, was a splendid one under proper conditions, and there was an excellent* tuture before it after the inevitable cleaning up. Very few of the claims had turned out duffers, and many of those which had been closed down had done so not on account of the poverty of the claim, but because they had been misand the capital had been frittered away. It was clearly the duty of the Government, Mr Easton pointed out, to step in and set the colony right in this matter in the eyes of the investing public. There were companies which, to his knowledge, had done nothing but make monthly call*, and which were no nearer starting than when-they were floated, but which wero still paying director** fees and bountiful salaries and expenses out of the capital -fund. .The same system of payment wascarried on with dredges that were laid up for the summer, the directorate aud staff continuing to draw fees whi'e the dredge was earning nothing. Much a, state bf things was wicked extravagance, and companies could not exp-ct to pay dividends as long as it existed. The present panic was being foster* d, to his knowledge, by interested parties, and his advice to shaiebolJers was to hold- tight to their shares, and devote their attention to seeing that thp claims in which they were interested were economically and efficiently managed.