Mining license

“ Within 6 months since the date of invalidation of the mining license, the licensed organization or individual shall remove all remaining assets of its/her/her own and related parties from the mining area. Past this time limit, any remaining assets will belong to the State. 4. Within the time limit specified in Article 3 of this Article, organizations or individuals licensed for mining shall fulfill the obligations related to the mine closure, environmental rehabilitation and restoration and soil rehabilitation under this Law and other relevant laws. ”

“ Organizations and individuals that mine minerals for use as common construction materials are not required to apply for mining licenses when: a/ Mining minerals in the land area of an approved or licensed investment project to build a work and using mined products only for building such work. Before mining, they shall register the mining area, capacity, volume, method, equipment and plan with the provincial-level People's Committee ”

“ The Canadian Dominion government is very oppressive. Mining laws are very arbitrary and strictly enforced. A person wishing to prospect for gold must first procure a miner's license, paying ten dollars for it. If anything is discovered, and he wishes to locate a claim, he visits the recorder's office, states his business, and is told to call again. In the meantime, men are sent to examine the locality and if anything of value is found, the man wishing to record the claim is told that it is already located. ”

“ If we were at liberty to look into the opinion of the court for the purpose of ascertaining what questions were made on the argument, and decided by the court, we should find that, upon a liberal construction of the stipulations of counsel, the defendants were allowed to insist that they were warranted in their possession of the lands, for the purpose of extracting the minerals, by a license inferred from the general policy of the State or of the United States, in relation to mines of gold and silver and the lands containing them. ”

“ Under legislation preceding that date, no title could be or was conferred to mining claims, beyond possessory rights, maintained by working and payment of a small royalty. Citizens of the United States might explore and occupy under regulations as prescribed by law. In the absence of congressional enactment, local legislation was authorized to provide necessary rules; the local customs and district rules not in conflict with the United States laws were also recognized. The law was, in reality, a license only to go upon the mineral-bearing portions of the public domain. ”

“ Miners shall pay for each and every license the sum of ten dollars. Every person, firm, or company who shall employ others in the business of mining for coal, or for gold, silver, copper, lead, iron, zinc, spelter, or other minerals, not having taken out a license as a manufacturer, and no other, shall be regarded as a miner under this act: Provided,Proviso. ”

“ A limitation is not put upon the sale of the ground located, nor upon the number of locations which may be acquired by purchase, nor upon the number which may be included in a patent. Every interest in lands is the subject of sale and transfer, unless prohibited by statute, and no words allowing it are necessary. In the mining statutes numerous provisions assume and recognize the salable character of one's interest in a mining claim. ”

“ The next provides that all valuable mineral deposits in government lands shall be free and open to exploration and purchase, and the lands in which they are found to occupation and purchase. In the next it is declared that no location of a mining claim shall be made until the discovery of the vein or lode within the limits of the claim. The whole scope of the chapter is the acquisition of title from the United States to mines and mineral lands, the discovery of the mineral being, as stated, the initial fact. Without that no rights can be acquired. ”

“ 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. ”

“ Thus read, the court held that they merely prohibited the passage of title, under the provisions of the town-site laws, to mines of gold, silver, cinnabar, or copper which were known to exist on the issue of the town-site patent, and to mining claims and mining possessions, in respect to which such proceedings had been taken, under the law or the custom of miners, as to render them valid, creating a property right in the holder, and not to prohibit the acquisition for all time of mines which then lay buried, unknown, in the depths of the earth. ”

“ Nothing in this Proclamation shall prevent any person from quarrying stone for building purposes, or any native of the Protectorate from mining for iron, salt, soda, or potash, except in any area over which a mining lease has been granted.
No person to prospect without a prospecting right, or exclusive licence. ”

“ The owner of a quartz mill or reduction, not a mine owner in connection therewith, may also receive a mill-site patent. Such sites are located under the mining act, and in compliance with local law and customs as recognized. Such possessory rights give title also to all growing timber thereon. There must in every case be given satisfactory proof of the non-mineral character of the site, and the improvements thereon must be equal to $500 in value. A mill passes to a railroad, if located after a land grant inured to the road. ”

“ Property in mines not discovered, and registered according to law, whether the mine was on public or private lands, was vested, as has already appeared, exclusively in the Supreme Government, so that private persons could not acquire it or any interest in it in any other mode than that prescribed in the provisions of the mining ordinance. Reference therefore must be made to those provisions to ascertain what they are and what the discoverer is required to do in order to acquire such a property. ”

“ 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. ”

“ In any case where tailings or any other products whatever from the operations of mining or metallurgy are being discharged, or about to be discharged, in such a manner as to hinder or injuriously affect any other person in the execution of his legal mining rights, or the future development of mining, it shall be lawful for the Government Inspector of Mines to order the disposal of such products or tailings in some other manner not detrimental to present or future mining. ”

“ 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. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The proof of false representations will rescind any such patent and the ground will revert to the Government and be again open to location.
In the surveying and laying off of mineral claims for patent purposes, the United States laws require the claimant to put the work into the hands of a mineral surveyor. Such a surveyor may usually be engaged in any mining district and he will hold a commission from the [57] Department of the Interior authorizing him to do this sort of work. ”

“ Miners’ rights entitle the holders to take possession of, and reside on and mine, so much of the Crown lands as may be prescribed by the bylaws of the Local Mining Board. Business licences enable the holders to occupy and carry on business on the gold-fields, on lands not exceeding one acre in extent, and are issued at £2 10s. ”

“ No time need be spent in restating the general common-law rule that the ownership in fee of the surface of the earth carries with it the right to the minerals beneath, and the consequent privilege of mining to extract them. ”

“ Land embraced within a town-site on the public domain, when unoccupied, is not exempt from location and sale for mining purposes; its exemption is only from settlement and sale under the pre-emption laws of the United States. Some of the most valuable mines in the country are within the limits of incorporated cities, which have grown up on what was, on its first settlement, part of the public domain ”

“ By the regulations issued on March 31, 1882, it is enacted that any parcel of new or unworked land, taken possession of with a view of obtaining a lease, shall be efficiently and continuously worked from the date of possession by not less than two men to four acres or less, and an additional man to every other two acres, under pain of forfeiture of the title to the land. The holder of a miner’s right may apply for authority to search for gold, and the holder of a mineral licence may apply for authority to search for minerals on land aforesaid. ”

“ It was urged on the argument that a patent for each location was required to prevent a monopoly of mining ground,-to prevent, to use the language of counsel, the public domain from being "monopolized by speculators." The law limiting the extent of mining lands which an individual may locate has provided, so far as it was deemed wise, against an accumulation of them in one person's hands. It could not have prohibited the sale of the location of an individual without imposing a restriction injurious to his interests, and in many instances destructive of the whole value of his claim. ”

“ In all legislation, whether of congress, or of the state or territory, and by all mining regulations and rules, discovery and appropriation are re ognized as the sources of title to mining claims, and development, by working, as the condition of continued ownership until a patent is obtained. ”

“ The first of these sections provides that in the absence of necessary legislation by Congress the legislature of a state may provide rules for working mines involving easements, drainage, and other necessary means to their complete development, and that these conditions shall be fully expressed in the patent. ”

“ The principal measures prescribed for this purpose require the exercise of greater precaution and care on the part of the mine owner for the safety of the miners than was required by the common law. To hold that he may shift his liability to any person employed by him as examiner or manager who holds the certificate of the state mining board is to lessen his responsibilities, and defeat, in great part, the beneficent purposes of the act. ”

“ The objection to the patent by reason of its embracing over five thousand acres was accordingly overruled.
By a provision of the mining act of 1870, still in force, two or more persons, or association of persons, having contiguous claims of any size, are allowed to make a joint entry thereof. Rev.Stat., sect. 2330. If one individual should acquire all such contiguous claims by purchase, no sound reason can be suggested why he should not be equally entitled to enter them all by one entry as when they were held by the original parties. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The business of smelting is a part of the operation of mining, although it may be a distinct branch from that of digging the ore; but the law ought not to be so construed as to require the whole operation to be embraced in the same contract. They are different operations, requiring different qualifications, and distinct regulations. This contract is for the possession of land. The work is to be performed at the United States' lead mines, and must of course be performed within the limits prescribed by law to be attached to such mines. ”

“ The question presented for our decision is one of great interest to miners on the public lands, and with respect to it much difference of opinion exists. This difference has arisen from a consideration, on the one hand, of what would properly be called the true end lines of a claim upon a lode of a specified length and width, after it has been opened by explorations, and its general course and direction are seen, and a consideration, on the other hand, of the statute requiring the location of a claim to be distinctly marked on the ground, so that its boundaries may be readily traced. ”