SALE OF MINERAL LANDS.

HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES, FEBRUARY 9, 1865.

[The policy of vesting the fee of mineral lands in the miners, and thus promoting security of titles, permanent settlements, and thorough development, is believed to be here conclusively sustained. Unfortunately for the best interests of the country, and owing chiefly to opposition from the State of California, it has only been partially carried out, and by very cumbersome and impracticable methods. The whole subject is more fully discussed by Mr. Julian in an elaborate report from the House Committee on Public Lands during the first session of the Thirty-ninth Congress.]

MR. SPEAKER,- The policy of the government in dealing with the vast mineral resources of the nation is a subject of the highest moment to the people, and invokes the early and earnest attention of Congress. No one can overstate its magnitude, considered in relation to the actual facts of our condition to-day. In seasons of prosperity and peace our country can endure much mal-administration, and very serious financial mistakes; but these are not to be hazarded in this crisis of our history. We are compassed about with perils and pressing necessities, and must husband both our wisdom and our resources if we hope to save the Republic.

The measure I have had the honor to report from the Committee on Public Lands proposes a radical and entire change in the present policy of the government respecting its lands containing the precious metals. It provides for vesting the fee in individual proprietors by public and private sale, instead of retaining the title in the government and treating their occupants as tenants at will. It contemplates their survey and subdivision into small tracts, and fixes a minimum price upon them, graded according to size, locality, and mineral value. It prohibits combinations among bidders at the public sales, and the purchase of any lands by foreigners, except those who shall have declared their intention to become citizens. It provides that actual discoverers and workers of mining localities shall have the right to purchase them at the minimum price, and thus relieve themselves from the disadvantage of competing with rich capitalists. It limits the quantity of mineral land, which any single purchaser may buy, to forty acres. It requires that the gold and silver extracted shall be coined in the

mints of the United States, empowers the President to lay off the mining regions into suitable coining districts, and compels miners to have their gold and silver coined in the districts in which they are found. It further provides that every purchaser shall first take the oath of loyalty to the United States prescribed by law, and that the net proceeds of the sales of these lands shall be dedicated and applied to the payment of the principal and interest of the bonds of the United States. This is a brief outline of the main features of the bill; and I propose, in entering upon its discussion, to refer to some preliminary considerations which fairly open the way.

That the present condition of our currency is an unsound one, is a proposition which no man will dispute. That the only safe basis for a financial medium of exchange is coin, may be affirmed as equally true. It is needless to deny this fact or dispute about its philosophy. The civilized world has so adjudged. The question may fairly be accepted as a settled one, that gold and silver constitute the true medium of exchange, and the permanent standard of value. No financial policy therefore can be trusted which does not contemplate a return to specie payment as soon as practicable. This is the opinion of Mr. McCulloch, the able Comptroller of our national banks. He says, "It should be the object of all honorable bankers to expedite, as far as possible, rather than to postpone, a return to specie payments," and that "it must never be forgotten that the business of the country rests upon an unsound basis, or rather is without a proper basis, as long as the government and the banks are not meeting their obligations in coin." Our government securities may be very current to-day, because they are sustained by popular confidence and the tide of fortune which seems to be sweeping away all obstacles to the triumph of the national cause. But this confidence may not be abiding. What we most of all need is such a policy as will sustain popular confidence, even under military failures and a prolonged war; and such a policy must embody the fundamental principle just stated.

But to this end, Mr. Speaker, the quantity of the precious metals must be increased. The startling disproportion of gold and silver to other values, and to our commercial wants, must in some way be destroyed or greatly reduced. The property of the United States within the last ten years has increased about nine hundred million dollars per year. This increase is estimated to be more than two hundred times greater than the increase of coin during

the same period. These are very suggestive and significant facts. The growth of our commerce and the issue of paper money and government securities still further complicate our financial condition, and demand, as an absolute necessity, an increase of the quantity of gold and silver. If this is not provided for, the price of coin will continue to advance, and by its effect upon government stocks and prices generally must seriously cripple the prosecution of the war, and most injuriously affect the welfare of the whole country. Here is the real problem of our finances, if not also a problem involving the national life. That we are to crush the rebellion, and that speedily, few men can any longer doubt. Every passing day is demonstrating that our military power is amply adequate to the task it has in hand. Of the questions growing out of the war which yet remain to be settled, the grand one, and by far the most difficult of solution, is that of our finances. How can the further inflation of the currency be prevented, and a return to specie payments become possible, without increasing the quantity of specie? Even should the war be ended within the present year, and permanent peace be restored, the question I am presenting must continue a vital one, demanding the early and most earnest consideration of statesmen.

Perhaps it will be said that increased taxation can meet the financial difficulty. I agree that it may partially do so. If Congress, in the early stages of the war, had known how to tax, and had possessed the courage to impose such burdens upon the people as the national exigency demanded, our financial condition would have been incalculably better than we now find it. The price of gold would not have gone up as we have seen it. The great mass of the people, who are interested in stable and moderate prices, would not have been compelled to buy the necessaries of life at the enormous and ruinous rates which have resulted from the inflation of the currency, unaccompanied by courageous efforts in the way of taxation to defray the expenses of the war as it progressed. The government, in the purchase of its vast supplies for our grand armies, would have been able to do so at such reasonable rates as to have saved hundreds of millions of dollars, thus husbanding our resources, maintaining the national credit, and insuring the confidence of the people. A system of vigorous taxation, inaugurated early in the year 1862, before the derangement of the currency was made manifest, and steadily maintained since that time, would have saved to the country more than a million dollars per day, thus averting the frightful national debt which has accu

mulated, and is rapidly increasing through the failure of timely and adequate taxation.

But these legislative mistakes cannot be undone. We are compelled to deal with the present as the past has made it. Congress, within the last three years, has been learning the science of taxation. Our burdens, while they are by no means crushing, are heavy. Undoubtedly we shall be compelled to increase them in any event of the future; but no rate of taxation which any public man will dare propose, or which the people would endure, will help the country out of its financial crisis. Some policy which will secure to the government a fresh and liberal supply of the precious metals will be found absolutely necessary. If, therefore, there is anywhere an available source of revenue yet untouched, by which the burdens of the people may be greatly relieved, and the nation itself rescued from the great financial maelstrom which threatens to swallow it up, it becomes our chosen and highest duty to seek that source of revenue, and coin it into the national service. Sir, I believe it requires no divining-rod to find it, and that all we need, in the words of Mr. Ruggles, is to "uncover the mountains of gold and silver, garnered up by Providence to meet the cost of saving our nation's life."

The auriferous regions of the United States on the western portion of the Continent extend from thirty-one degrees and thirty minutes north latitude to the forty-ninth parallel, and from one hundred degrees of longitude to the Pacific, embracing portions of Dakota, Nebraska, Colorado, New Mexico, Arizona, Utah, Nevada, California, Oregon, Washington, Idaho, and Montana, and covering an area of more than a million square miles. These vast regions are described in official reports as stretching longitudinally and in lateral spurs, crossed and linked together by intervening ridges, connecting the whole system by five principal ranges which divide the country into an equal number of basins, each being nearly surrounded by mountains and watered by mountain streams and snows; thereby interspersing this immense territory with bodies of agricultural lands equal to the support, not only of miners, but of a dense population. These mountains are literally stocked with minerals, gold and silver being interspersed in profusion over this immense surface, and daily brought to light by new discoveries.

According to the Commissioner of the General Land Office, a greater amount of mineral wealth is to be found in the territory of the United States than in all other habitable countries. Before the discovery of the precious metals in California the annual pro

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duction of gold in all parts of the world did not exceed an average of eighteen million dollars. The present annual production in California alone is estimated at seventy million dollars. The Commissioner of the General Land Office, in his report for 1862, estimated the production of gold in that year, in California and the other western gold-bearing regions, at one hundred million dollars; and the Secretary of the Interior, in his report of the same year, estimated that if an amount of labor relatively equal to that expended in California had been applied to the gold fields known to exist outside of that State, the production, including that of California, would have exceeded four hundred million dollars. Taking into account subsequent and quite recent discoveries in our mining regions, and especially in Arizona, I think it safe to say that an annual product of a thousand million dollars might be realized under a just policy, which would at once invite laborers to our Western Territories and reward them by rich returns. I quote the following facts from the official report just referred to:

"The usual size of a mining claim in the quartz region is one hundred feet on the line of the lode or vein, and one hundred feet on each side, equal to an area of twenty thousand square feet, or say twelve hundred claims to the square mile. Allow that only one hundredth part of the mountain surface is occupied by paying leads or veins, and there will be space for three million six hundred thousand claims. But Governor Evans, of Colorado, estimates the already discovered gold-bearing region of that Territory as affording ample room for eight hundred thousand claims, and states that new discoveries are daily increasing with area. A glance at the map is sufficient to show that the mineral region of Colorado occupies less than one sixth of the whole extent under consideration; but assume it to be one sixth, and there will be ample extent on this basis for four million eight hundred thousand claims, which, if worked, would give employment to twenty million men."

These pregnant facts, Mr. Speaker, are supplied by the government itself; and yet weighed down with debt, and threatened with bankruptcy and ruin through the scarcity of gold and silver, it has adopted no policy whatever in dealing with our mineral lands, save the negative one of reserving them from sale. The United States have left them open to our people and to the greed of monopolists from foreign countries for the past sixteen years, during which a thousand million dollars have been extracted, without a dollar of revenue to the national treasury. Sir, this is financial profligacy. It is legislative madness. If not repented of, and that speedily, it may end in national suicide. Our system of taxation reaches everywhere, drawing revenue from all quarters, except these prime sources of supply. They are exempt, while every other in