Some Defects Of The United States Mining Law (eecdcbfa-de8d-4b26-aa74-a39537f43b87)

Discussion of the paper of COURTENAY DEKALB, presented at the New York meeting, February, 1915, and printed in Bulletin No. 98, February, 1915, pp. 331 to 337. HORACE V. WINCHELL, Minneapolis, Minn.-Mr. Dehalb summarizes the reasons which he believes are important for the revision of the mining laws, as follows: "1. The conceptions as to the characteristics of orebodies that were held at the time the statute of 1872 was enacted have since proved to be in many respects erroneous." We all appreciate the force of that suggestion. The idea of the old prospector who made rules and regulations in the early days, which were attempted to he incorporated, so far as possible, in the Mining Act of 1872, was that all of the veins in a certain district outcropped upon the surface, or approximately parallel to each other upon the surface, and maintained that parallelism beneath the surface. Therefore, it seemed perfectly proper and natural for each man to stake his claim upon an outcropping, and have the right to follow that vein in working downward, with the general expectation that his workings would always remain just as far away from those of his neighbor as the outcroppings upon the surface. This does not happen to be the case. Dr. Raymond has very ingeniously referred to the subject in one case, in words which read as follows: "If all mining properties presented this beautiful simplicity of structure (ideal location of ideal vein), and all mining locators exhibited a corresponding simplicity of purpose, the application of the law would be easy, but the naiveté of the statute fares badly between the freaks of nature and the tricks of man."