THE NATION'S PRIDE 



597 



which must be restored to the soil is 

 phosphorus. This is native in most soils, 

 but is needed by all after long use. The 

 orange orchards of California and the 

 apple orchards of Oregon and Washing- 

 ton, not to speak of others, draw heavily 

 upon the soil. 



And for its replenishing the orchard- 

 ists are buying phosphate rock in Florida, 

 which is carried 5,000 miles by water and 

 then inland, while in Idaho, Montana, and 

 Wyoming we have under withdrawal 

 nearly 3,000,000 acres of lands that are 

 underlaid with phosphate rock. There is 

 no law today under which this can be 

 secured. In Montana and elsewhere 

 throughout the West are smelters which 

 produce the sulphuric acid necessary for 

 the conversion of this rock into practi- 

 cable fertilizer; so that the development 

 of this industry waits only upon the pas- 

 sage of a law which will put this mineral 

 at the command of those who need it. 



Our coal lands are now subject to sale 

 at appraised values based upon an esti- 

 mate of the content of the land. This is 

 at best an expert's guess, and converts 

 each purchase into a gamble, both on the 

 part of the government and the pur- 

 chaser. The bill does not exclude this 

 method, but supplements it with a simple 

 provision by which the purchaser, instead 

 of buying at hazard, may pay a royalty 

 upon what he produces. It gives the man 

 of moderate means an opportunity to se- 

 cure a mine. 



THE OIL WELL AS A PLACER CLAIM 



As to oil and gas, the House committee 

 had extensive hearings at which no prac- 

 tical man engaged in the industry ottered 

 any objection to the plan proposed. The 

 existing law, under which such lands 

 have been taken up, is to be characterized 

 by no politer word than as a plain misfit. 

 Oil is found hundreds and sometimes 

 thousands of feet below the surface of 

 the earth, yet the law applicable to its 

 acquisition is the placer law, intended to 

 apply to the recovery of superficial min- 

 erals. 



This law is of romantic origin, for it 

 is the outgrowth of the experience of the 

 Argonauts who went to California in the 

 days of '49. The measures adopted by 



these men for the government of their 

 claims along the mountain streams, where 

 they did no more than lift the river sands 

 to the pan or rocker, finally were incor- 

 porated into law ; and the governing prin- 

 ciple of this law was that before a man 

 could claim ownership in a placer claim 

 he must have found gold there ; and until 

 he did, others might, at their bodily risk 

 to be sure, attempt to make prior discov- 

 ery. The utter inapplicability of such a 

 principle to a mineral found perhaps 

 2,000 feet below the surface, and where 

 the discovery must be made at a cost of 

 twenty, fifty, or a hundred thousand dol- 

 lars, is clear beyond comment. 



Now, under this impossible law a large 

 amount of public land was "taken up,'' 

 and by that is meant that it was located 

 on and thereafter became a general basis 

 for speculation, and sometimes was de- 

 veloped. That the law is as hazardous 

 to the investor as it is unsatisfactory to 

 the government is universally conceded, 

 and in its stead should come a measure 

 under which the government would give 

 a permit at first — an exclusive permit for 

 drilling — and upon discovery within a 

 given time an area be given as a reward 

 for proving the ground, and adjacent 

 lands leased upon a royalty basis. 



A PRICELESS RESOURCE BEING WASTED 



There is another charge to be made 

 against the existing law more serious 

 than its unworkability. It is supremely 

 wasteful. If the land is leased, some 

 control can be exercised over the manner 

 of development. Millions of barrels of 

 oil have been wasted by being allowed to 

 flow into the streams, by being mixed 

 with water, or by evaporation. There 

 has been no such waste, I am told, in any 

 other mining. 



And petroleum is a priceless resource, 

 for it can never be replaced. Trees can 

 be grown again on the soil from which 

 they have been taken. But how can pe- 

 troleum be produced? It has taken the 

 ages for nature to distil it in her subter- 

 ranean laboratory. We do not even know 

 her process. We may find a substitute 

 for it, but have not yet. 



It is practically the one lubricant of the 

 world today. Not a railroad wheel turns 



