It may be useless to regret past mistakes, and there is some difference of opinion among miners whether any serious mistake has been made, but it is evident that if the mining population could have been made permanent residents of the various counties as early as 1849, California would now be thrice as rich, in a pecuniary point of view, as she is at present. Her gold produce alone has been $900,000,000; and the produce of her agriculture and other branches of industry has been nearly as much, and yet the total assessed value of the taxable property of the State is only $180,000,000, of which nearly half is land alone; so it seems California, with all her wonderful wealth, intelligence, and industry, has made only five per cent. profit on her business in a period of twenty years of such an abundance of gold and comparative cheapness of the necessaries of life as were never witnessed elsewhere in the world. SECTION 11. 1. Mining laws.-2. Need of congressional legislation.-3. Customary limitation of size.—4. Proposed width of claims.-5. Work required to hold claims.-6. Proposed change as to work required.-7. Law needed for centuries of mining.-8. Congress alone cau establish uniformity.-9. Miners' regulations in Nevada county.-10. Miners' regulations in Sierra county.-11. Miners' regulations in Tuolumne county.-11. Miners' regulations in Sacramento county.-12. Miners' regulations in Columbia district.-13. Miners' regulations in North San Juan district.-14. Miners' regulations in Pilot Hill district.-15. Miners' regulations in New Kanaka camp.-16. Miners' regulations in Copperopolis district.-17. Statute of Nevada.-18. Blank district, Nevada -19. Virginia district, Nevada.-20. Regulations of Reese River district.-21. Quartz statute of Oregon.-22. Quartz statute of Idaho.-23. Quartz statute of Arizona.-24. The mining laws of Mexico. 1.-MINING LAWS. Mining for gold and silver is a business new in Anglo-Saxon life, and not provided for in our laws. Suddenly the American government has found itself in the possession of the richest deposits of the precious metals in the world, with the certainty that the mining industry based upon them will be one of the greatest and most permanent interests of the country. It is necessary now to foster this industry, to protect it, to frame a code of laws that will leave every possible liberty to the miner who wishes to work fairly in extracting the metal from the earth, and will throw every possible obstruction in the way of the drones and swindlers who wish to defraud the honest laborer by compelling him to pay for the right of working mines that should be open to him without charge. And, first, let us look at the regulations adopted by the miners and the statutes adopted by certain States and Territories in regard to mining for gold and silver. It is impossible to obtain, within the brief time allowed for this preliminary report, a complete collection of the mining regulations, and they are so numerous that they would fill a volume of a thousand pages. There are not less than five hundred mining districts in California, two hundred in Nevada, and one hundred each in Arizona, Idaho, and Oregon, each with its set of written regulations. The main objects of the regulations are to fix the boundaries of the district, the size of the claims, the manner in which claims shall be marked and recorded, the amount of work which must be done to secure the title, and the circumstances under which the claim is considered abandoned and open to occupation by new claimants. The districts usually do not contain more than a hundred square miles, frequently not more than ten, and there are in places a dozen within a radius of ten miles. In lode mining, the claims are usually two hundred feet long on the lode; in placers the size depends on the character of the diggings and the amount of labor necessary to open them. In hill diggings, where the pay dirt is reached by long tunnels, the claim is usually a hundred feet wide, and reaches to the middle of the hill. Neglect to work a placer claim for ten days in the season when it can be worked is ordinarily considered as an abandonment The regulations in the different districts are so various, however, that it is impossible to reduce them to a few classes comprehending all their provisions. The States of Nevada and Oregon and the Territories of Idaho and Arizona have each adopted statutes in regard to the size and tenure of mining claims, and these statutes, so far as they conflict with the district regulations, probably supersede them, although the act of the last session of Congress to legalize the occupation of the mineral lands provides for the issue of patents to only the holders of those lode claims which are occupied and improved according to the local custom or rules of miners in the district where the same is located.* Question might arise whether the statute of the State or Territory is to be recognized as of any force in determining the right of claimants to patents. The congressional act mentions only "the local custom or rules of miners in the district;" and those words certainly do not describe a statute; and yet the statute should be preferred, because it is uniform, clear, preserved in unquestionable records, accessible to all, and of precise jurisdiction; whereas the local customs and rules are various, and in many districts indefinite, unrecorded, almost inaccessible, and conflicting in their jurisdiction. The evils of the system of local customs and rules are well stated in a report made to the senate of Nevada on the 23 February last by the committee on mines and mining. The subject under consideration was the adoption of a general statute to supersede these local customs and rules. The committee say: "In the establishment of a code of mining laws in this connection there are certain self evident principles which should be adopted— "First. The interest in question being coextensive with the area of the State, and intimately blended with every part of it, the laws which seek to regulate it should be general in their character, uniform in their application, and universal in their dissemination. "Second. It being a vital and permanent interest, the laws which govern it should have the vitality and stability of legislative enactment. "Third. It being an interest pertaining to our own people, but valueless to them without foreign aid, the aim of the laws should be twofold, to give protection to our citizens and encouragement to capital." Does the present system answer all or any of these requirements? 1. As to uniformity: there is now nothing approaching it. There never was confusion worse confounded. More than two hundred petty districts within the limits of a single State, each one with its self approved code; these codes, differing not alone each from each other, but presenting numberless instances of SECTION 2. And be it further enacted, That whenever any person or association of persons claim a vein or lode of quartz, or other rock in place, bearing gold, silver, cinnabar, or copper, having previously occupied and improved the same according to the local custom or rules of miners in the district where the same is situated, and having expended in actual labor and improvements thereon an amount not less than one thousand dollars, and in regard to whose possession there is no controversy or opposing claim, it shall or may be lawful for such claimant or association of claimants to file in the local land office a diagram of the same, so extended laterally or otherwise as to conform to the local laws, customs, and rules of miners, and to enter such tract and to receive a patent therefor, granting such mine, together with the right to follow such vein or lode with its dips, angles, and variations to any depth, although it may enter the land adjoining, which land adjoining shall be sold subject to this condition. contradiction in themselves. The law of one point is not the law of another five miles distant; and a little further on will be a code which is the law of neither of the former, and so on ad infinitum, with the further disturbing fact superadded that the written laws themselves may be overrun by some peculiar "custom" which can be found nowhere recorded, and the proof of which will vary with the volume of interested affidavits which may be brought on either side to establish it. Again, in one district the work required to be done to hold a claim is nominal; in another, exorbitant; in another, abolished; in another, adjourned from year to year. A stranger, seeking to ascertain the law, is surprised to learn that there is no satisfactory public record to which he can refer; no public officer to whom he may apply who is under any hond or obligation to furnish him information or guarantee its authenticity. Often in the newer districts he finds there is not the semblance of a code, but a simple resolution adopting the code of some other district, which may be a hundred miles distant. What guarantee has he for investment of either capital or labor under such a system? Again, under the present loose organization of districts, with their vagueness of boundary, it is often impossible to determine by which code of laws a location is governed. Cases of this kind have already arisen in several districts, and are liable to do so again in any part of the State; and, under the present system, there is no means of guarding against it, except by an actual survey of the boundaries of every district-an incalculable expense. 2. As to permanency of regulations, even such as they are, there is now no guarantee even of that. A miners' meeting adopts a code; it apparently is the law. Some time after, on a few days' notice, a corporal's guard assembles, and, on simple motion, radically changes the whole system by which claims may be held in a district. Before a man may traverse the State, the laws of a district, which by examination and study he may have mastered, may be swept away, and no longer stand as the laws which govern the interest he may have acquired; and the change has been one which by no reasonable diligence could he be expected to have knowledge of. But if the laws be uniform, and registered upon the statute book of the State, he will have security in his tenure, and reasonable notice of any change therein. 66 3. As to protection to the miner and encouragement to the capitalist, the present system, or lack of system, affords neither. The cause of uncertainty of titles to land in our sister State did not, through fifteen years of her history, more paralyze her progress than the uncertainty of mining titles in the outside districts now retards our development. Five years ago a horde of greedy prospectors from every part of the Pacific coast swept over our State, leaving their notices of location on every "dip, spur, and angle,' thick as leaves in Vallam brosa;" and, after a year or two of feverish unrest, swarmed away again to the newer fields of Idaho and Montana, leaving nothing to mark their passage but their faded "notices" mouldering on the hillside, their pitiful burlesque of development in the way of assessment-work, and the threatening terrors of the common-law doctrine as to "vested rights." This is what the true citizens of Nevada, those who, never losing faith in her future, have adhered to her fortunes in sunshine and gloom, now reap from the ruinous system of uplegalized district laws. They see thousands of claims in which capital would be eager to engage, could satisfactory title be given, now lying neglected because there is no system of abandonment as yet, or sufficient legislative or judicial sanction to gain the confidence of business men. Such will not be satisfied with a “general belief," or an "evident tendency of decisions;" they insist on definite enactment or positive adjudication. In vain do our people relocate abandoned mines. in accordance with the only laws which govern the matter. When such titles are presented to the capitalist his first inquiry is: "What is the authority for so doing? Has your legislature authorized it? Has your judiciary sanctioned it? If not, where is the security for investment?" As an instance of the manner in which the mining regulations are changed and the mining records neglected, the experience of North San Juan, one of the most prosperous and permanent mining towns, may be given here. In The Sweetland mining district was organized and a series of regulations adopted for it in 1850, when claims were restricted to thirty feet square. 1852 the size was enlarged to eighty by one hundred and eighty feet, and the regulations were changed several times in other respects. In 1853 the Sweetland district was subdivided into three smaller districts, of which North San Juan is one. This latter adopted a set of regulations at the time of its organization, and adopted the set now in force a year later. A mining recorder was elected in 1854, but he has been absent from the district for five years, and no one has been chosen to fill the place The regulations are treated by many persons as if they were no longer in force-at least, as regards certain points; and in many cases it would be difficult to ascertain whether there is any good title to claims under the regulations. 2.-NEED OF CONGRESSIONAL MINING LAW. I would suggest that the act of last session should be so amended that, in the granting of patents, State and territorial statutes in regard to the size, possession, working, and abandonment of claims should be regarded as of higher authority than the "local custom or rules;" and I venture to recommend further that a congressional act should be passed prescribing the manner of taking up, recording, working, and abandoning mining claims so long as the title remains in the United States, so that uniformity shall prevail throughout the whole country. Such an act, based on the laws and regulations of which copies are given on subsequent pages, would, I am confident, give general satisfaction to the miners, as securing their equal rights. As it is now, there is great diversity. The following list shows some of the differences in the size of the claims : Oregon, under statute, 300 feet on the lode by 150 feet wide. Tuolumne county, California, miners' regulations, 150 feet on the lode and 150 feet on each side. Sierra county, California, miners' regulations, 250 feet on the lode and 250 feet on each side. Copperopolis district, California, miners' regulations, 150 feet on the lode and 250 feet on each side of the lode by 300 feet wide. In most districts of Nevada and in many of California a miner may claim for each person in his company 200 feet on the lode, but he acquires no exclusive right of possession to the adjoining land, except in so far as he may have to occupy it in his mining operations. In Arizona, Oregon, Idaho, and some districts of California and Nevada, the mine may take a considerable tract on the sides of the lode. If we compare the size of the claims simply in relation to the length on the lode, we see that, taking the space allowed to the miner in Nevada county, California, as the unit of measurement, the miner in the State of Nevada gets twice as much, in Oregon thrice as much, and in Arizona six times as much. There is no good reason why the claims should not be of the same size in all these places. The act of Congress provides in section 4 "That no location hereafter made shall exceed two hundred feet in length along the vein for each locator, with an additional claim for discovery to the discoverer of the lode, with the right to follow such vein to any depth, with all its dips, variations, and angles, together with a reasonable quantity of surface for the convenient working of the same as fixed by local rules: And provided further, That no person may make more than one location on the same lode, and not more than three thousand feet shall be taken in any one claim by any association of persons." These provisions reduce the length of the claims to be located hereafter in Arizona and Oregon to two hundred feet for each person; but they do not authorize any enlargements of the claim in the districts where the limit is less than the two hundred feet. And yet justice and sound policy require that a miner should be permitted to take up as large a claim in Nevada county or in Tuolumne county, California, as in Oregon or Arizona. 3.-THE CUSTOMARY LIMITATION OF SIZE. The limitation is, however, more apparent than real. If John Smith supposes a lode to be rich, he selects a portion three thousand feet long, puts a stake at each end, with a notice, and files with the recorder of the district or county, a notice that he and fourteen associates have taken up that claim. If he imagines that there is some rich ground outside of the three thousand feet, he takes another claim of three thousand feet, in the names of fifteen friends not mentioned in the first notice. He may have no authority from those persons to take claims for them, but no one objects in such a case. If John Smith now desires to own more than his two hundred feet, he goes to the men whose names he has put down, and requests them to give him a bill of sale for one hundred feet, or one hundred and fifty feet each, and as they owe their claims to him, they cannot refuse. Then, instead of being the owner of only two hundred feet, he can become, with little trouble or expense, the owner of three or four thousand feet. He can hold as many feet by purchase as he pleases. There is no limitation in any county to the amount of mining claim that can be held by one person by purchase; but in Mexico no company can locate more than four times as much as the claim of a single individual, and there is less opportunity for the abuse of which mention has been made. It would be advisable, in my opinion, to amend the act of last session so that no claim for any company shall exceed sixteen hundred or two thousand feet in length. The Mexican law fixes the limitation at two hundred varas, or about twenty-two hundred feet. I would recommend further that, in the proposed change in the length of claims, each individual should be entitled to hold by location not more than five hundred feet. The valuable claims are usually found by solitary miners, or by small parties of not more than three. When such, or a miner or party, finds a place in a rich lode, there is no good reason why he or they should be compelled by the law to give most of it away to friends, as is done under the present law and custom. Three locators get only six hundred feet out of three thousand, or onefifth. They may request their friends to convey to them one half of the remaining four-fifths, but oftentimes they fear that such request would give offence, and if the claim turns out to be valuable, most of the benefit goes to persons who have done nothing to discover the mine. It would be better to offer a larger reward to the miner, and not compel him to give so much to his friends. Two hundred feet is not enough on ordinary lodes for a mining enterprise; the paystreak of rock may run down obliquely lengthwise in the vein, and the miner wants to know that he can follow it for a considerable distance in his claim. If two miners should find a rich place in a quartz lode, and could trace it for eight hundred feet along the lode, and were satisfied that the mine would prove profitable from the start, and were doubtful whether any part of the lode beyoud the eight hundred feet would pay, it is evident that they would rather own the eight hundred feet by location than be compelled to give half of it to other persons. The knowledge that location could acquire more than two hundred feet by loca |