feeling the many disappointments and failures to which they are subject in their
efforts to acquire wealth from this source, they believe that the government of-
the United States, which they love, should rather offer rewards from the public
treasury for the discovery of mines, than that such discovery should be but the
signal for measures of taxation.

They also fear all systems of sale, lest any which should be adopted might
result in a monopoly of the mines and their concentration into few hands.
They are jealous of all systems for the disposition of the mineral lands which
shall allow the lands to be bought by the fortunate possessors of large capital,
in extensive bodies, to the exclusion of the men whose only capital consists in
their labor. They, nevertheless, will readily acquiesce in any plan which shall
confirm existing rights at reasonable rates, and which shall be safe against the
evils to which your committee have referred.

The amount proposed is five dollars per acre for the vein mines and all the
land adjoining necessary for working them, and the payment of three per cent,
of the net product of all such mines into the treasury of the United States,
which shall be in lieu of the present impost.

It will be remembered that the present tax was adopted in preference to the
five per cent, tax on the gross proceeds of the mines proposed by the House of
Representatives in 1864. Any tax on the gross product of mines must be
purely a tax upon effort, and must result, as the- recent tax on crude petroleum
did, in the ruin of those engaged in the business, arid a serious limit on pro-
duction.

Another feature of the bill recommended is, that it adopts the rules and regu-
lations of miners in the mining districts where the same are not in conflict with
the laws of the United States. This renders secure all existing rights of prop-
erty, and will prove at once a just and popular feature of the new policy. Those
" rules an$ regulations" are well understood, and form the basis of the present
admirable system in the mining regions : arising out of necessity, they became
the means adopted by the people themselves for establishing just protection to
all.

In the absence of legislation and statute law, the local courts, beginning with
California, recognize those " rules and regulations," the central idea of which
was priority of possession, and hare given to the country rules of decision so
equitable as to be commanding in its natural justice, and to have secured uni-
versal approbation. The California reports will compare favorably, in this re-
spect, with the history of jurisprudence in- any part of the world. Thus the
miners' " rules and regulations" are not only well understood, but have been
construed and adjudicated for now nearly a quarter of a century.

It will be readily seen how essential it is that this great system, established
by the people in their primary capacities, and evidencing by the highest possible
testimony the peculiar genius of the American people for founding empire and
order, shall be preserved and affirmed. Popular sovereignty is here displayed
in one of its grandest aspects, and simply invites us not^to destroy, but to put
upon it the stamp of national power and unquestioned authorityTJ

This should be dont; generously, 'for the nation's sake, "Chose brave men



WEST OF THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS. 221

who have established a high civilization on the far-off Pacific, whose hearts, in
the nation's trials, beat so true, and who are now fast closing in upon the civili-
zation of your owfi west, should he made to feel, not that you are masters, but
brethren and friends.

By their loyalty they gave you peace where your power was scarcely felt ;
by their industry they gave the solid base of silver and gold to the national
issues and the . national credit, and it is left to history to balance and to tell
how, without that peace their patriotism so well preserved, and that silver and
gold which their industry gave the nation, the national cause could have been
equally benefited. From their earnings, too, came those contributions which
will forever form so beautiful a chaplet around their own brows. They set the
highest example of a Christian people, patriotic a.nd peaceful, sturdy and loyal



tnjfcepfloTn. industrious and charitable. It is for such a people that we legislate.
[ The necessity for the segregation of the agricultural part of the public domain
from that which is purely mineral is of the first character. It will be remem-
bered that mining alone cannot supply a single human want, and no community
would' eventually be so poor as a mining community purely. But the miner is
nearly always the pioneer of society where mines exist shortly, however, to be
followed by the agriculturist and the artisan. Mutual production and ex-
change result, and society is established. Nothing renders society so stable
as giving to the people the title to the land upon which they live. They learn
to love, it, and are the first to find out its greatest value, and consequently to
employ it for the highest uses. Homes of a permanent character are thus"e"s\.
tablished, and the school-house and church follow to light the path and to
cheer the way through life. To these ends the earliest ownership should be
given to him who, by patient and virtuous toil, proposes to become a corner-
stone to community. Every wise consideration demands that the segregation
of the agricultural lands from those purely mining should be made, and this bill
makes such provision.

Your committee are aware that they tread new ground, but they bring many
years of experience to the task, and the light has been used to reach the end
which wi^jDromote the greatest happiness of the citizen and the glory of the
republicJJL/

> Ate**C'^<'

[The following is &,copy of the act of Congress approved August , 1866, to
legalize the occupation of the mineral lands, and for other purposes :

SECTION 1. That the mineral lands of the public domain, both surveyed and
unsurveyed, are hereby declared to be free and open to exploration and occu-
pation by all citizens of the United States, and those who have declared their
intention to become citizens, subject to such regulations as may be prescribed
by law, and subject also to local 'custom or rules of miners in the several mining
districts, so far as the same may not be in conflict with the laws of the United
States.

SEC. 2. And be it further enacted, That whenever any person or association
of persons claim a vein or lode of quartz, or other rock in place, bearing gold,
silver, cinnabar, or copper, having previously occupied and improved the same
according to the local custom or rules of miners in the district where the same
is situated, and having expended in actual labor and improvements thereon an
amount not less than one thousand dollars, and in regard to whose possession
there is no controversy or opposing claim, it shall and may be lawful for said
claimant or association of claimants to file in the local land ofiice a diagram of
the same, so extended laterally or otherwise as to conform to the local laws,
eustoms, and rules of miners, and to enter such tract and receive a patent
therefor, granting such mine, together with the right to follow such vein or

* See Congressional Globe for debates on this bill



222 RESOURCES OF STATES AND TERRITORIES

lode, with its dips, angles, and variations, to any depth, although it may enter
the land adjoining, which land adjoining shall be sold subject to this condition.

SEC. 3. And be it further enacted, That upon the filing of the diagram as
provided in the second section of this act, and posting the same in a conspicu-
ous place on the claim, together with a notice of intention to apply for a patent,
the register of the land office shall publish a notice of the same in a newspa-
per published nearest to the location of said claim, and shall also post such
notice in his office lor the period of ninety days ; and after the expiration of
Baid period, if no adverse claim shall have been filed, it shall be the duty of the
surveyor general, upon application of the party, to survey the premises and
make a plat thereof, indorsed with his approval, designating the number and
description of the location, the value of the labor and improvements, and the
character of the vein exposed ; and upon the payment to the proper officer of
five dollars per acre, together with the cost of such survey, plat, and notice,
and giving satisfactory evidence that said diagram and notice have been posted
on the claim during said period of iJfcnety days, the register of the land office
shall transmit to the General Land Office said plat, survey, and description ;
and a patent shall issue for the same thereupon. But said plat, survey, or de-
scription shall in no case cover more than one vein or lode, and no patent shall
issue for more than one vein or lode, which shall be expressed in the patent
issued.

SEC. 4. And be it further enacted, That when such location and entry of a
mine shall be upon unsurveyed lands, it shall and may be lawful, after the ex-
tension thereto of the public surveys, to adjust the surveys to the limits of the
premises according to the location and possession/and plat aforesaid, and the
surveyor general may, in extending the surveys, vary the same from a rec-
tangular form to suit the circumstances of the country and the local rules, laws,
and customs of miners : Provided, That no location hereafter made shall ex-
ceed two hundred feet in length along the vein for each locator, with an addi-
tional claim for discovery to the discoverer of the lode, with the right to follow
such vein to any depth, with all its dips, variations, and angles, together with
a reasonable quantity of surface for the convenient working of the same as fixed
by local rules : And provided further, That no person may make more than
one location on the same lode, and not more than three thousand feet shall be
taken in any one claim by any association of persons.

SEC. 5. And be it further enacted, That as a further condition of sale, in the
absence of necessary legislation by Congress, the local legislature of any State
or Territory may provide rules for working mines involving easements, drain-
age, and other necessary means to their complete development ; and those con-
ditions shall be fully expressed in the patent.

SEC. 6. And be it further enacted, That whenever any adverse claimants to
any mine located and claimed as aforesaid shall appear before the approval of
the survey, as provided in the third section of this act, all proceedings shall be
stayed until a final settlement and adjudication in the courts of -competent juris-
diction of the rights of possession to such claim, when a patent may issue as in
other cases.

SEC. 7. And be it further enacted, That the President of the United States
be, and is hereby, authorized to establish additional land districts, and to ap-
point the necessary officers under existing laws, wherever he may deem the
same necessary for the public convenience in executing the provisions of this act.

SEC. 8. And be it further enacted, That the right of way for the construe
tion of highways over public lands, not reserved for public uses, is hereby
granted.

SEC. 9. And be it further enacted, That whenever, by priority of possession,
rights to the use of water for mining, agricultural, manufacturing, or other pur-
poses, have vested and accrued, and the same are. recognized and acknowledged



WEST OF THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS 223

by "the local customs, laws, and the decisions of courts, the possessors and own-
ers of such vested rights shall be maintained and protected in the same ; and
the right of way for the construction of ditches and canals for the purposes
aforesaid is hereby acknowledged and confirmed. Provided, however : That
whenever, after the passage of this act, any person or persons shall, in the con-
struction of any ditch or canal, injure or damage the possession of any settler
on the public domain, the party committing such injury or damage shall be liable
to the party injured for such injury or damage.

SEC. 10. And be it further enacted, That wherever, prior tothe passage of
this act, upon the lands heretofore designated as mineral lands, which have been
excluded from survey and sale, there have been homesteads made by citizens of
the 'United States, or persons who have declared their intention to become citi-
zens, -which homesteads have been made, improved, and used for agricultural
purposes, and upon which there have been no valuable mines of gold, silver,
cinnabar, or copper discovered, and which are properly agricultural lands, the
said settlers or owners of such homesteads shall have a right of pre-emption
thereto, and shall be entitled to purchase the same at the price of one dollar and
twenty-five cents per acre, and in quantity not, to exceed one hundred and sixty
acres ; or said parties may avail themselves of the provisions of the act of Con-
gress approved May 20, 1862, entitled "An act to secure homesteads to actual
settlers on the public domain," and acts amendatory thereof.

SEC. 11. And be it further enacted, That upon the survey of the lands afore-
said, the Secretary of the Interior may designate and set apart such .portions of
the said lands as are clearly agricultural lands, which lands shall thereafter be
subject to pre-emption and sale as other public lands of the United States, and
subject to all the laws and regulations applicable to the samej

2. PERMANENT TITLES TO MINERAL LANDS IN THE UNITED STATES.

In glancing back over the history of California for the last eighteen years,
we cannot overlook the fact that the State has, for the want of a permanent
mining population, lost what would be worth more than a hundred millions of
money. The work has been done mostly by men who had no homes, and who
did not intend to remain in California. Their enterprises generally were under-
taken for the purpose of making the most profit in a brief time. There was
no proper care for ,1 distant future ; and without such care no society is sound,
no State truly prosperous. If a claim could, by hastily washing, be made to
pay $10 per day to the hand for three months, or $6 for three years by a care-
ful washing, the hasty washing was preferred. If a fertile valley that would
have yielded a revenue of $5 per acre for century after century to a farmer
could l?e made to yield $5 per day to a miner for one summer, its loam was
washed away, and a useless and ugly bed of gravel was left in its place. The
flukes, the ditches, the dwellings, the roads, and the towns were constructed
with almost exclusive regard to immediate wants. The good turnpike roads
were private property* on which heavy tolls were levied, so that not unfre-
quently a gentleman in a one-horse buggy would have to pay $5 or $10 toll in
a day's travel. The claims were made small, so that everybody should have a
chance to get one ; but the pay-dirt was soon exhausted, and then there mut be
a move. In such a state of affairs miners generally could not send for iheir
families or make elegant homes. Living alone and lacking the influences and
amusements of home-life, they became wasteful and wild. Possessing no title
to the land, they did nothing to give it value, and were i;eady to abandon it at
any moment. The farmers, merchants, and other fixed residents of the mining
counties are agitated and frightened nearly every year by the danger of a
migration of the miners to some distant place. One year it is Peru ; another it
is British Columbia, Idaho, Reese river, Pahranagat, or Arizona ; and it may
next be Brazil, Liberia, or Central Africa, for all we know.



224 RESOURCES OF STATES AND TERRITORIES

The losses to individuals and to the State have been so great from these
migrations that for years past there has been an increasing desire for some
.change in the tenure of mining ..lands, so that the mining population shall be
attached to the soil, and thus have an opportunity and a motive for establish-
ing permanent homes and a personal interest in improving and enriching the
country. The act of Congress passed at the last session for the granting of
fee-simple titles to lode mines, and to the agricultural lands in the mineral dis-
tricts, is the beginning of a new and better era in the history of the Pacific
coast. So so<an as the necessary surveys can be completed, many applications
will be made for patents, and in a few years great and beneficial changes will
result. Such is the general opinion among the more intelligent miners and
public men of the coast. As an indication of the manner in which the news of
the passage of the act was received, the following passages are quoted from
leading editorials in influential newspapers :

The San Francisco Bulletin, in its issue of July 31st, said :
(^No measure of equal consequence to the material, and, we may add, to the
moral interests of the Pacific States, was ever before passed by Congress.
* The passage of the bill, whatever defects it may develop when
more critically examined and enforced, marks a change in the public land policy
equal in importance to the adoption of the pre-emption and homestead system ;
indeed its practical effect will be to extend the now unquestionable benefits of
that system to the vast field of the opineral regions which have hitherto been
largely excluded from those benefits^! * * * It was one of the,greatest
evils of the negative policy of Congress regarding the mineral lands that, while
it prevented our own people from acquiring titles to them, it opened their trea-
sures freely to the transient adventurers from abroad, who only came to take
them away without leaving any equivalent. As a measure calculated to give
homogeneity and fixedness to our population, security to titles, and encourage-
ment to investments of capital and labor, the new mining law is full of promise.
We believe it will have the effect also to stimulate exploration and production
in the mining districts. |jts good features are apparent ; its bad ones will appear
in time and can be easily remedied^

The Alta Californian of the same date, said :

" The passage of the bill will be regarded in future timea as an epoch in the
history of the State. It offers a patent to every lode miner who desires it ; it
opens all the agricultural land in the mineral districts to pre-emption and home-
stead claims, and it will give secure titles, build up comfortable homes, and fix
a large permanent population in the rich mining country of the Pacific slope."

The Mining and Scientific Press, in its issue of the 14th of July, 1866, spoke
thus, editorially : ,

" The papers generally throughout the State (California) and Nevada appear
to approve the bill; and so far as we can judge there is, general feeling favor-
able to its passage, as a necessity for quieting the public mind upon this vexa-
tious question."

The Stockton Independent of January 8, 1866, spoke thus of some of the
evils which this bill was designed to cure :

M There are now over one hundred thousand adult men asd women in the mines
of California and Nevada without homes or the possibility of acquiring them
Shall we let this preposterous rule go on from generation to generation, until
from hundreds of thousands this nomadic population amounts up to millions and
tens of millions ? From the twenty-seventh to the forty-seventh meridian of
longitude, and from latitude thiriy-four to the extremest northern line of the



WEST OF THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS. 225



United States, all is mineral land all has been prospected" and proven to be
such.

Is it the part of wise statesmanship to adopt as a permanent law the rule that
the millions who are in the next quarter of a century to occupy this vast area
over one-third of our territory shall be without homes ? Such a thing is
horrible to contemplate. Compared with it the anarchy and social demorali-
zation which have reigned in Mexico, Peru, and other Spanish American coun-
tries for the last half century are as nothing. The policy is wholly opposed to
the instincts and habits of the Anglo-Saxon race opposed to the idea of law
and government. It invites the nation to anarchy and offers a premium to
crime and pauperism.

It is high time that the rule were changed. All the mineral lands ought to
be surveyed in small lots and sold, or at least given away in fee to the occupants.

These people should have homes and the means of acquiring permanent
property and status as citizens."

The Sacramento Union of the 23d of June said :

" There are many miners who feel as deep an interest in the matter as others
who devote themselves exclusively to farming, for prosperous miners, who do not
wish to abandon the hills and valleys where they have harvested fortune, have
a passion for pretty homes and a blooming ranch. Upon the whole, this bill
has been framed with a more intelligent regard for the interests of the people of
the Pacific coast than any other previous measure that we can now recall, and
it is probable that its provisions can be executed without inflicting injury upon
the rights which accrued under the policy hitherto pursued by the government .
It is a great stride towards the final adjustment of a dangerous question, and a
vast improvement upon the measures broached at Washington at various periods
during the past three years."

Governor McCormick, of Arizona, in his annual message delivered to the
legislature on the 8th of October, 1866, said :

" The act of Congress to legalize the occupation of mineral lands, and to ex-
tend the rights of pre-emption thereto, adopted at the late session, preserves all
that is best in the system created by miners themselves, and saves all vested
rights under that system, while offering a permanent title to all who desire it,
at a mere nominal cost. It is a more equitable and practicable measure than
the people of the mineral districts had supposed Congress would adopt, and
credit for its liberal and acceptable provisions is largely due to the influence of
the representatives of the Pacific coast, including our own intelligent delegate.
While it is not without defects, as a basis of legislation it is highly promising,
and must lead to stability and method, and so inspire increased confidence and
zeal in quartz mining."

The Virginia Enterprise, the leading journal of the State of Nevada, in its
issue of July 13, advocating the passage of the bill, said :

" The bill proposes nothing but what already exists,except giving a perfect title
to the owners of any mine who may desire it. But the effect of this single title
clause, if the bill becomes a law, will be of wonderful benefit to our tate. Do-
mestic, and especially foreign capitalists, who have been restrained from invest-
ing in our mines on account of the uncertain tenure by which they were held,
and the general insecurity of title, will not hesitate to invest when they are
guaranteed unmolested and permanent possession by the government. It will
give an impetus to prospecting, for discoveries will be salable ; to develop-
ments and heavy operations generally, for titles will be quiet and secure. It
will create an unprecedented demand for labor, and inaugurate enduring pros-
perity throughout the State. The poor and the rich, the workingman and the
capitalist, will be equally benefited by it."
H. Ex. Doc. 29 15



226 RESOURCES OF STATES AND TERRITORIES



It may be useless to regret past mistakes, and there is some difference of
opinion among miners whether any serious mistake has been made, but it is evi-
dent that if the mining population could have been made permanent residents
of the various counties as early as 1849, California would now be thrice as rich,
in a pecuniary point of view, as she is at present. Her gold produce alone has
been $900,000,000; and the produce of her agriculture and other branches of
industry has been nearly as much, and yet the total assessed value of the tax-
able property of the State is only $180,000,000, of which nearly half is land
alone; so it seems California, with all her wonderful wealth, intelligence, and in-
dustry, has made only five per cent, profit on her business in a period of twenty
years of such an abundance of gold and comparative cheapness of the necessaries
of life as were never witnessed elsewhere in the world.



SECTION 11.

1. Mining laws. 2. Need of congressional legislation. 3. Customary limitation of size. 4.
Proposed width of claims. 5. Work required to hold claims. 6. Proposed change as to