CLASSIFICATION OF MINERAL LANDS. 81 



The general impression that coal lands are sold at low prices is 

 due largely to the fact that in the past most of the sellers had bought 

 their land as farm land, knowing little or nothing of its coal content 

 or value, and had regarded the coal as a little overmeasure on the part 

 of nature for which they were willing to take anything that was 

 offered or that looked good to them. As a result a large number of 

 the recorded sales of coal land have been made at prices that have 

 had little relation to the value of the coal, and in the past a large 

 percentage of the total acreage has been sold at such prices. A recent 

 review of coal-land sales for one year, as recorded in one of the most 

 reliable of the coal journals, excluding all sales of tracts containing 

 over 10,000 acres, which were obviously bought for holding or specu- 

 lation, showed 40 sales, representing a total of 95,218 acres, at an 

 average price of $209 per acre. This average price for a year's sales 

 shows the great extent to which coal lands have passed out of their 

 original farmer ownership. Grouped according to prices, it is found 

 that that year's sales as thus recorded ran as follows : 



Prices of coal lands sold in one year. 



Price per acre. 



Acres. 



$800 or more 



seootojsoo 



$400 to $600 



$200 to $400.... 

 $100 to $200.... 

 Less tlian $100.. 



10,198 

 1,633 

 417 

 14,046 

 26,097 

 32,817 



In other words, 66 per cent of the sales and the acreage were at 

 $100 an acre or more and 40 per cent of the sales were at $200 an acre 

 or more. 



It is evident that a large share -of these were sales of lands not 

 purchased for immediate development. Sixteen of these sales, con- 

 veying 74,633 acres, covered tracts containing more than 1,500 acres, 

 an area generally admitted to be as large as can be economically mined 

 from one plant in present-day practice. 



, In order to give the prospective buyer aji ample margin of safety, 

 the basing prices of the Government coal lands are fixed at only 40 

 per cent of the value (2^ cents per ton) named in a preceding para- 

 graph, or at 1 cent per ton for a coal of good average quality— say 

 12,500 B. t. u. — equivalent to one-tenth of a cent for each 1,250 B. t. u. 

 of the coal. This price is one-tenth the assumed average royalty 

 rate. 



FACTOBS nrVOIiVED. 



The valuation indicated, however— 1 cent per ton for coal in the 

 ground — is not put on all coals indiscriminately. Though the value 

 of any coal is most readily obtained by taking the royalty rate, 

 78894°— Bull. 537—13 6 



