Mining claim

“ The court said that the declaration that no title could be acquired, under the provisions relating to such town sites, and the sale of lands therein, to any mine of gold, silver, cinnabar, or copper, or to any valid mining claim or possession held under existing laws, would seem, on first impression, to constitute a reservation of such mines in the land sold, and of mining claims on them, to the United States. ”

“ We must study an amendment to the mining laws which will prevent over­lapping claims and which shall end all conflicts which have hindered the development of rich mining claims by authorizing the prior locator to administer and operate the mining claim, subject to the filing of a bond or the deposit of certain portions of the income with the Bureau of Mines or the Department of Agriculture and Natural Resources. ”

“ Subsequent legislation specified with greater particularity the modes of location and appropriation and extent of each mining claim, recognizing, however, the essential features of the rules framed by miners, and, among others, that which required work on the claim for its development as a condition of its continued ownership. ”

“ A prudent miner acting wisely in taking up a claim, whether for a placer mine, or for a lode or vein, would not overlook such circumstances, and they may in fact control his action in making the location. If the land contains gold or other valuable deposits in loose earth, sand, or gravel, which can be secured with profit, that fact will satisfy the demand of the government as to the character of the land as placer ground, whatever the incidental advantages it may offer to the applicant for a patent. ”

“ Upon the bed-rock is a deposit, from three to four feet in depth, of gravel and boulders, in which the gold is hidden. This is called by the miners "pay-dirt," and to remove it to the surface and wash it is the end of mining. It is an expensive and laborious process indeed. The water has first to be controlled; and in mines of not too great depth this is done by a drain ditch along the bed-rock, commenced many claims below. In this all the claim-holders are interested, and all contribute their quota of the labor and expense of digging it. ”

“ It is very true that Congress has, by statutes and by tacit consent, permitted individuals and corporations to dig out and convert to their own use the ores containing the precious metals which are found in the lands belonging to the government, without exacting or receiving any compensation for those ores, and without requiring the miner to buy or pay for the land. It has gone further, and recognized the possessory rights of these miners, as ascertained among themselves by the rules which have become the laws of the mining districts as regards mining claims. ”

“ None but permanent and bona fide settlers should be permitted to secure land under the Homestead Law.
In 1872 Congress enacted a law for the location, purchase, and entry of land containing gold, silver, copper, and other precious metals, commonly called the mining law of the United States, which became a part of the Revised Statutes. Mining claims are of two classes: (1) lode or quartz claims, and (2) placer claims. Both are initiated by discovery, staking out on the ground, and filing notice of location. ”

“ The holder of a miner’s right is entitled to enter upon any Crown land for the purpose of prospecting and searching for gold, and to take and maintain possession of a parcel or parcels of land and work the same, subject to the regulations and provisions of the Act; he is also authorised to cut timber for removal or for the erection of a place of residence or of business, and with the Warden’s consent, to make tramways or roads for mining purposes. Claims are of four kinds—alluvial deposits and river or creek beds; quartz lodes, reefs, and leaders ”

“ These deposits are naturally the first to fail in productiveness, but the neighboring hills are formed of a gold-bearing quartz which is being crushed, night and day, by hundreds of powerful machines; and the works still pay ten thousand miners fair day-wages, besides giving the organized companies who employ them satisfactory dividends. Thus mining has been largely robbed of its adventurous character in this neighborhood, and perhaps also of most of its alluring charm, having become a sort of regular industry, like coal-mining, or even brick-making. ”

“ It must be remembered that mining, though often so profitable, is nevertheless a destructive industry, thus differing from agriculture, which is productive, and manufactures, which are constructive. Every ton of stone broken and treated from even the best gold mine in the world makes that mine the poorer by one ton of valuable material; thus, to buy a mining property on its past reputation for productiveness is, as a rule, questionable policy, unless you know there is sufficient good ore in sight to cover the purchase cost and leave a profit. ”

“ Some of the ore from both kinds of mines-between 10 and 20 per cent.-is concentrated by washing or beneficiated after coming out of the mine and before starting out of the state, but our conclusion respecting the usual operations renders this deflection immaterial.
Plainly the facts do not support the contention. Mining is not interstate commerce, but like manufacturing, is a local business, subject to local regulation and taxation. ”

“ To make these mines produce the greatest possible quantity of lead of which they are capable, with the least possible expense, is a consideration of the first political consequence, to which end it is desirable that the reserved mines be disposed of, to individuals, or that the term for which leases are granted be extended from three to fifteen years, which will induce capitalists, who are now deterred by the illiberality of governmental terms, to embark in mining. ”

“ It is to the public interest that deposits of mineral should not be permitted to remain idle and undeveloped. This has been recognized from the earliest times, and laws have been framed in all countries for the encouragement of mining enterprise. In many cases the state or the ruler has sought to obtain a share in the profits of mining, or even to work mines for the individual profit of the ruler or of the state. ”

“ Both treat the question as affecting the solution of other contentions. There has been no ruling on the point by the Supreme Court of the state. We think the tax in its essence is what the act calls it-an occupation tax. It is not laid on the land containing the ore, nor on the ore after removal, but on the business of mining the ore, which consists in severing it from its natural bed and bringing it to the surface where it can become an article of commerce and be utilized in the industrial arts. Mining is a well-recognized business, wherein capital and labor are extensively employed. ”

“ Intending settlers or companies can obtain, upon favourable terms, land for pastoral or agricultural purposes, mineral leases, and concessions giving them the right to cut timber upon the State forests. A miner can acquire, on the annual payment of ten shillings, a miner's right, entitling him to take possession of, mine, and occupy, unoccupied Crown Lands for gold mining in accordance with the Mining Regulations. ”

“ By the custom which has obtained among miners in the Pacific States and Territories, where mining for the precious metals is had on the public lands of the United States, the first appropriator of mines, whether in placers, veins, or lodes, or of waters in the streams on such lands for mining purposes, is held to have a better right than others to work the mines or use the waters. ”

“ The latter is a thing apart from the relation of employer and employee, which in all producing occupations is purely local in character. Extraction of coal from the mine is the aim and the completed result of local activities. Commerce in the coal mined is not brought into being by force of these activities, but by negotiations, agreements, and circumstances entirely apart from production. Mining brings the subject matter of commerce into existence. ”

“ The desultory manner in which the mines have been wrought, and the imperfect method in which accounts have been kept, when kept at all, with other circumstances, which are in some measure incidental to the operations of mining in a new country, oppose so many obstacles in the way of obtaining the desired information, that I find it impossible to present a correct statement, from authentic sources, of the annual product of the mines for any series of years. ”

“ Certainly, ores differ as much from other products of the land as anthracite coal does from the bituminous variety, and ore gives character to appellants' holdings. Lands chiefly valuable for ore are depreciated by its extraction, and probably will yield less and less under an ad valorem tax as the mining continues. ”

“ Endless litigation, arising from the defects of the first mining laws, and the inexperience of the surveying engineers, contributed to ruin the small capitalists who had attempted to work the mines. Foreign capital is now the chief requirement. The existing mining law, greatly improved since 1868, is the simplest in Europe; the expense of a concession is almost nominal, and the royalties on ore are extremely moderate. ”

“ One is that contractors who strip off the overburden of soil, gravel, etc., in open pit mines, other contractors who load the ore in such mines into cars, and still others, usually four in a group, who take ore out of underground mines, are not included. But none of these are engaged in mining on their own account. Instead, they are working for those who are so engaged. However important their service, they are not principals in the business, but employees ”

“ With the decadence of placer mining in California, the accustomed idea of private property finally prevailed in385 the passage of a law permitting the patenting of mineral lands. The only effect is to lock up opportunities—to give the owner of mining ground the power of saying that no one else may use what he does not choose to use himself. And there are many cases in which mining ground is thus withheld from use for speculative purposes, just as valuable building lots and agricultural land are withheld from use. ”

“ From all of which it will be seen that nearly $4,000,000 may be given as the product of the mines up to May, 1870.
Nor are the mines, as a whole, decreasing in value. The promise of the past is the promise of the future. If results ave been encouraging, they may be fabulous. There are fields above and below unoccupied. It needs, simply, that capital, energy, and practical mining experience combine, to make this second to no hydraulic region in the State. The wealth is here, and it remains to be seen whether the forces that produce it are to bless with their coming and successful working. ”

“ My investigations show that many owners of mining property of this country do not mine it themselves, and do not invest their money in the plants necessary for the mining, but they lease their properties for a term of years varying from twenty to thirty and forty years, under conditions requiring the erection of a proper plant and the investment of a certain amount of money in the development of the mines, and fixing a rental and a royalty, sometimes an absolute figure and sometimes one proportioned to the market value of the coal. ”

“ Under the mining laws Congress has made public lands available to people for the purpose of mining valuable mineral deposits and not for other purposes. [4] The obvious intent was to reward and encourage the discovery of minerals that are valuable in an economic sense. Minerals which no prudent man will extract because there is no demand for them at a price higher than the costs of extraction and transportation are hardly economically valuable. ”

“ The discoverer and the operator—that is, the miner himself—has, however, had to be reckoned with by all three of the other claimants, because they have almost universally sought to escape the risks of mining, to obtain the most skilful operation, and to stimulate the productivity of the mines; thereupon the miner has secured at least partial consideration. This stands out in all times and all places, and while the miner has had to take the risks of his fortuitous calling, the Overlord, State, or Landlord have all made for complacent safety by demanding some kind of a tithe on his exertions. ”

“ It exists no more. All mine development work ceased long ago. There are green-stained carbonates on the surface, but there are no copper ore-bodies. The "mines" have been dismantled of their machinery and other equipment, and not even a lone watchman remains to point out to the desert-wayfarer the spot on which was reared the monumental mining-stock swindle of the century. Every dollar invested by the public is lost. ”

“ Of course, where mining companies, organized solely to obtain vast areas of timber land, under cover of the mining laws, especially the Timber and Stone Act, and the Placer Mining laws, found their work exposed by the activity and watchfulness of the forest officers, they naturally raised a cry against the Service that woke the echoes.
The Placer laws allow a company to obtain title to twenty acres of land simply by showing five hundred dollars' worth of mining work done upon it. No signs of mineral need be shown, no further attempt to develop it is required. ”

“ This prevents many from engaging in mining on the public lands, and especially those who would be best able to prosecute the business; and of the number who take leases, a great proportion continue to pursue the desultory method of mining in alluvial [20] ground, introduced at an early period by the French, but which is attended with very great uncertainty.
Improvements remain also to be introduced in regard to the processes of mining, the furnaces employed, and the method of raising the ore. ”