revealed its true nature. It was a centre for quartz, not alluvial mining.163

Because the mineral to be extracted was auriferous rock which required crushing in batteries, the industry and its labour force had a distinctive structure, in the case of Thames one already foreshadowed on a smaller scale at Coromandel.

The unit of production

As an extractive process, quartz mining operated within a wider time-frame than its alluvial counterpart. Time was consumed with driving shafts among leaders and propping them, and shifting quartz to batteries for crushing (or otherwise processing) to obtain the final bullion. Such delays, and the costly nature of machinery to be installed, made this style of mining ill-suited to the financial resources of the usual individual transient miner, even to syndicates of such men unless well-to-do sleeping partners could be induced to buy shares or to 'grubstake'. In consequence the ephemeral, self-employed prospector quickly gave way on the Thames to a relatively static wage-labourer working within or employed by a syndicate, or (increasingly) employed by a company.

Companies displace groups of miners

The first wave of companies, soon to be numbered in their hundreds, were formed under the 1865 Gold Mining Companies Limited Liability Act. Usually these small

gold-mining companies had little more financial strength than the partnerships of miners which they tended to replace. Generally speaking, the more substantial of the mining companies were those incorporated under the Joint Stock Companies Act 1860.164 Companies marked the large-scale entry of Auckland capitalists and entrepreneurs into the mining industry.165 But what is more germane to this report is the effect that the replacement by companies of individualised mining had on the revenue Maori received as rent. Companies could substitute a lease for the previous payment by each miner of his miner's right, a financial arrangement much less favourable to Maori landlords.

General stimulus to capital investment

Salmon wrote: The advent of heavy machinery gave Thames its special character at the peak of its prosperity',166 reminding us that the opportunities for company investment offered by quartz mining were not confined to the gold mines themselves. Cognate industrial activities such as foundries and engineering works-in Auckland and Thames-made an appearance. Also encouraged were coal mines providing for steam engines (for example, the Bay of Islands Coal Company),167 the timber trade (for example, the Hauraki Sawmill Company),168 and others-mines had a voracious

164 See, for example, Dead Companies File, A35, A42, NARC.

165 New Zealand Herald, 5 July 1869, p. 6, col. 1; Stone, Makers of Fortune, pp. 13, 54.

166 Salmon, A History of Goldmining, p. 195.

167 Co. A34, NARC.

168 Co. A38, NARC.

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