Senator O'MAHONEY. May I interrupt you there, Mr. Secretary, to call attention to the fact that yesterday the Bureau of the Budget sent up the President's estimate of $300,000 for investigation of domestic sources of mineral supply under the Department of the Interior. An amendment to that effect was presented on the Senate floor when the Interior Department's bill was last under consideration and was adopted in the Senate but failed because no hearings had been held in the House. Now, with the Budget's estimate, it is likely that this appropriation will be made, but apparently it does not meet with your suggestion.

Secretary ICKES. Well, I am glad you let me make my statement before you made your comment.

Such an increase would insure that practically all important minerals would be covered by the studies of the two Bureaus, and that the number of pilot plants would be greatly increased with resulting benefits to the national defense and the West.

Fifth. At present any findings of ore on public lands, no matter how valuable they may be to defense or to the development of the West, as soon as they are discovered by Government scientists, or by others, may be locked up. That is, their development depends on the ability of the man who files on the land to convince his bank to gamble with him. In view of this and other obstacles to orderly development of the mineral resources of the West, I recommend that these barriers which hamper the administration of the public lands by the General Land Office be removed. Amendments to the mining laws should be made (a) to broaden the coverage of the mineral leasing principle as opposed to the system of lode and placer claims, (b) to require the recording of outstanding mining claims in the General Land Office, and to require annual reports on assessment work on such claims, and (c) to bring lands acquired by various Federal Government agencies under the same mining laws as govern lands of the public domain.

I have always been a conservationist. Wise conservation does not mean hoarding of resources indefinitely. It means their intelligent, planned use for the permanent welfare of the whole community rather than for the temporary advantage of a few. We want no more shortlived boom towns and wastrel fortunes. We want growing, permanent communities.

The cream of the older metal mining has been skimmed off. Many people are defeatist because lower-grade ores form the bulk of what remains. That fact should not discourage us from working out the development of the West. It should simply spell out for us the truth that if we are going to undertake the development we cannot leave this job entirely to hazard or to individual efforts.

Sixth. The defense activities have not yet been spread out through the West in such a way as to absorb all of the capacities of the West. Presumably they will be spread out somewhat more in the future. Otherwise, there will be an even wider discrepancy between a more heavily industrialized East and a mining, agricultural-forest, or cattle West. This would be as highly undesirable for the balanced economy of the Nation as the unbalanced economy of the South has been.

Seventh. Neither a defense mining boom nor a defense boom in the use of western water powers by electrometallurgical industries will in

themselves guarantee to the West the growth, the continuance, the security, or the increased wealth that it ought to have.

Unless the mining development is planned in the light of the common community good, it may simply frustrate the people's hopes. Unless the power development is similarly planned, it may simply mean that a few larger companies have permanently tied up all of the cheapest power in the Nation, and have secured a leading advantage over their competitors.

The planning that I speak of consists of a series of steps which I will elaborate later.

I believe that by taking thought now and by working out a coordinated program for mining, industry, and agriculture in the Western States, the West will enter a new era of responsible progress. One of the reasons that I feel confident of this progress is that the Western States have, in recent years, been shaking loose a little from the control of some of the monopolizing interests which have had them firmly under a checkrein for so many years.

This shaking loose from monopolizing influences means to me that the people are now seeing that they have a common responsibility for the development of their States, and that it is not always to the advantage of their States or communities to shove this whole burden of development onto a few private individuals, and hope that that will do well by everybody.

POTENTIAL POWER PROJECTS

I wish to present to you a group of potential power projects, hydro and steam, which are available for defense and the development of the West as soon as Congress is convinced that they are necessary and economically feasible. They total roughly 9,000,000 kilowatts of installed capacity. I also wish to point out in this connection that in many of these developments, steam plants, which will use the coal, oil, and gas resources of the West, will increase the value of the hydro projects by many times their own cost. Future developments of the industries locating in certain parts of the West may later indicate the desirability of an even larger number of steam plants.

These potential projects are in addition to those now authorized or under construction and should be constructed first in the areas of greatest indicated deficiency.

For the same reason Congress may also wish to locate large superpower steam plants in the cheap-coal areas of the Eastern States, where there are power deficiencies. While such plants will not aid the development of the West, they may be necessary for national defense.

I am assuming here that the Western States are willing to bank on their own future and to create enough public power so that they will be permanently attractive localities to industries using large blocks. of power and not merely temporary havens for industrial-defense transients. Their low-cost power, once secured, will only offset in small part the haul to the eastern markets, if all processed materials must be hauled to those markets. The assumption is that the Western States are determined to become larger markets themselves than they have been in the past, and these multiple-purpose projects will contribute to that objective.

These groupings are indicated on a map prepared by the Bureau of Reclamation. They could be completed in the course of a 6-year period if they were all begun now. I have asked Commissioner Page to go into the various projects in detail. I am submitting for the record a grouping by areas, with dates of completion and estimates of forthcoming deficiencies of approximately 2,000,000 kilowatts in the area west of the Mississippi.

REVISION OF MINING LAWS TO PROMOTE DEVELOPMENT

I have stated that I recommend amending the mining laws of the United States to remove certain obstacles to full development of the mineral resources of the West.

Congress, throughout our national history, has exhibited a tendency to place mineral lands in a separate category from agricultural lands and to adopt a different policy with respect to their use and disposition. Prior to the Civil War, however, there were frequent lapses in the pursuit of this policy; likewise, available facilities were inadequate for prompt determination of the mineral values of the vast public-land area. Consequently, practically all of the mineral resources of the public lands in the eastern half of the United States, and much in the Western States, passed into private ownership under laws providing for the disposal of agricultural or other nonmineral lands.

With the discovery of gold in California in 1848, the miners found practically nothing in existence in the way of a mining law. The "forty-niners," perforce, set up their own mining customs, which they enforced in typical frontier fashion, with a generous use of fist, gun, and hangman's noose. Eventually their local rules were recognized by the local courts and respected by State and Territorial legislatures. In the act of July 26, 1872, these local usages were confirmed by the Congress of the United States.

Under the mining laws of 1866 and 1872, the mineral lands of the public domain, both surveyed and unsurveyed, are free and open to exploration, occupation, and purchase by all citizens of the United States and those declaring their intention to become citizens. Mining claims are recorded in county recorders' offices. They may be maintained year after year if a minimum amount of "assessment" work, amounting to $100 a year, is done. They may be patented, when proof of discovery has been furnished and when improvements amounting to $500 have been made, for a payment of $5 an acre for lode claims or $2.50 an acre for placer claims.

The mining laws of 1866 and 1872 apply to all minerals on the public lands, both metallic and nonmetallic, except the deposits covered by the mineral leasing laws. As you well know, deposits of coal, oil and gas, oil shale, potash, sodium, phosphate, and sulfur are no longer subject to disposal under the old mining laws, but are leased under the terms of various mineral-leasing acts.

I should like to compare conditions of the supply of the metallic minerals on the public lands, which are disposed of under the mining laws of 1866 and 1872, with those of the supply of those nonmetallic minerals which are subject to lease. Such a comparison takes on great significance at a time like this, when the need for increased production of certain minerals has become critical for national defense.

A statement of the supply of copper, zinc, iron, and other metallic minerals, including those classed as critical or strategic, in the public lands of the United States, can be made easily, but it may be startling to some of you. There are no known reserves of these metallic minerals on the unappropriated, unreserved public lands of the United States. Under the laws providing for disposal of mineral lands, which I have just cited, practically all of the known deposits of these minerals have passed into private ownership or are under location by private individuals or groups of individuals. As soon as the existence of a mineral deposit becomes known it is covered by a mining claim and is no longer a part of the public domain. Even strategic minerals uncovered by investigations by the Geological Survey and the Bureau of Mines during the last 2 years are now under location by private claimants. Once a valid location is made, property rights, as secure in tenure as those conferred by a warranty deed, so long as the nominal amount of assessment work is performed, become vested and, regardless of pressing public need, the minerals may be developed only at the will of the locator.

In this connection, the question of monopoly should be considered. The mining laws do not limit the number of mining locations which may be made by any individual or corporation. Consequently, vast areas of public lands may be located and held under mining location by a single individual or corporation for speculative purposes. True, the assessment work must be performed in order to prevent relocation by others, but it is a notorious fact that frequently claims are held by a mere pretense of performing assessment work.

Let us turn now to a consideration of supplies of those minerals that are subject to disposal under the mineral leasing laws. As the result of the operation of these laws we still have substantial known reserves of such minerals on the public lands. Almost 35,000,000 acres in the Western States have already been classified as coal land, and more than 24,000,000 acres in these States remain withdrawn, awaiting examination and classification for coal. It is estimated that 700,000,000,000 tons of coal-chiefly lignite and sub-bituminous-or about 20 percent of the total reserves of the United States, are in public land, including land to which the Government has parted only with surface title. Almost 5,000,000 acres of the public domain are under oil withdrawals. Between 7 and 8 percent of the Nation's known oil reserves are estimated to be on Federal lands. Phosphate withdrawals aggregate almost 2,000,000 acres, potash withdrawals over 9,000,000 acres, and oil shale withdrawals almost 6,000,000 acres. These lands are all available for development under the Mineral Leasing Acts.

From the passage of the Mineral Leasing Act in 1920 to the close of the fiscal year 1940 more than 110,000 applications for permits and leases were filed. On June 30, 1940, more than 5,000 leases and permits were outstanding, covering more than 5,000,000 acres. Receipts under the Mineral Leasing Act from the date of its passage to June 30, 1940, aggregated $121,553,000. Receipts during the fiscal year 1940 were $5,020,000, of which $2,120,000 came from California and $1,742,000 from Wyoming.

Fifty-two and one-half percent of receipts under the mineral leasing laws are paid into the reclamation fund, and 372 percent are paid to

the States within whose boundaries the leased lands or mineral deposits are located.

Noteworthy progress has been made in unit operation of oil and gas fields on the public lands. The object of unitization under a cooperative or unit agreement, as opposed to competitive operation of several units in a single field, is to conserve the oil and gas resources and to lower the costs of their development. Nearly half of the current production of petroleum from public lands is developed under an approved cooperative or unit plan of development and operation.

With this background, I should like to suggest that the objectives stated in Senate Resolution 53 would be furthered substantially by the expanding of the mineral-leasing principle to include all minerals, both metallic and nonmetallic, which have any commercial value. The old mining laws aided materially in the settlement and development of the West, but they no longer are effective for that purpose. There are certain defects inherent in them which should be corrected. These laws were enacted at a time when the individual prospector, so frequently portrayed trudging up a dry gulch carrying a pick and leading his faithful burro, was the principal factor in the production of at least the precious and semiprecious metals. Every attempt that has been made within recent years to revise the mining laws has met with the loud protest that any change in these laws would deprive this prospector of an opportunity to make a livelihood. As a matter of fact, the individual prospector no longer exists as a significant factor in the mining industry. Since few metalliferous mineral deposits of consequence have been discovered by superficial prospecting in the past 30 years, it appears probable that surface prospecting of the oldfashioned type is not likely to add appreciably to our reserves of

minerals.

MORE MINERAL INVESTIGATIONS ESSENTIAL

There remain, then, geologic and subsurface exploration as the most promising methods of the future for increasing these reserves. This class of work is costly and highly skilled; technical training is necessary to carry it on with any degree of efficiency and possibility of success. Should the Federal Government undertake such exploration on the public lands, existing laws would not protect its rights to the results against any person who might file a mining location on the public land, except for those few minerals now covered by the mineral leasing laws. Such protection can only be afforded by mineral leasing legislation to cover all minerals on the public lands. Under such a leasing system the Government would be in a position to obtain a substantial bonus from lease applications for its work in discovering new mineral deposits.

The proposed amendments to the mining laws of the United States would still leave thousands of outstanding mining claims on the public lands, about which, under existing law, the Department of the Interior has no means of acquiring any information, save through an exhaustive search of the records of several hundred county recorder offices in the Western States. Furthermore, there appears to be no adequate authority for the enforcement of the provisions of the law concerning annual assessments on these claims.