States under which this western country was developed; but that is the right, not the privilege, the right that was conferred upon those who were willing to risk their very lives, their fortunes, their labor, everything that they hoped for in the future, to go out and discover upon the public lands of the United States these metals that were so necessary and have since proven to be even more necessary than was believed at that time.

Now, don't you think the miner who lives under that system of law, who has developed so much and so well under that system of law, do you think he's unreasonable if he says to you who want to change: "Show us a better plan. Show us a better plan than the ownership of the entire surface. We'll go along with you; or show us one that's equally as good, and we'll go along with you; but don't take away from us the right that has been enjoyed, because it was considered essential, and still is essential, to the orderly development of mining areas in the United States-the right to the enjoyment and the use of the surface of the mining claim that is located."

You've listened to me too long. I didn't intend to talk so long, but I thank you very much for this attention, and I'd like to answer any questions you have.

Mr. GOLDY. I might say I didn't pull on your coattail, Mr. Callahan, because of that very dramatic and excellently stated presentation of yours. It was just too interesting to listen to, and I didn't have the courage to yank your coattails. I'd like to make this one comment: I have had the pleasure of spending 2 days in a long discussion and conversation with Mr. Callahan and a group that he represents, a group of others from the Idaho Mining Association, and I think they were among the most profitable 2 days I've ever put in of discussions. Although Mr. Callahan doesn't think much of our proposal for separation of surface and subsurface resources, I think we have in mind answers to some of the questions he propounded. I think, nevertheless, that what he said is correct: that a meeting of this type can have real beneficial results, because there are very definitely areas of agreement, and Mr. Callahan stated a couple of such areas of agreement just a few minutes ago, among them the fact that everyone is agreed that this matter of using mining claims for nonmining purposes, for obtaining control of other resources other than minerals through the mining laws, is something that ought to be put to an end, and I will certainly subscribe to what Mr. Callahan said. I think you will recall I said this morning that, among the three reasons for the Bureau considering the mining laws, first and foremost was the fact we felt the present mining laws were impeding mining development, and one of the principal ways in which that's done is the fact that adequate protection is not given to the miner who wants to develop a subsurface mineral body. We have come up with the suggestion of a geological or geophysical claim, and in the meeting we had in Wallace a lot of practicality was added to the suggestions we initiated.

I'd like at this time to call upon Congressman White for a statement. I asked and Congressman White kindly consented to have himself put on the agenda for the meeting, and he has consented to present a statement at this time. Congressman White.

Congressman WHITE. Mr. Chairman, I am deeply grateful to you and appreciate your splendid courtesy in permitting me to participate

in the meeting and ask the questions I have, because they come before us all the time in the committee. Nothing can go through Congress, in dealing with mines and land, unless it goes through our committee. If we stop it, it stops.

You know, I believe it was Mr. Dooley that said Uncle Sam bet you $13.50 you can't live on 160 acres of land for 5 years without starving to death. Then there's another saying that more money has been put into the ground in mining than has ever been taken out. Now, all I want to do as your Representative of Idaho and the rest of the Northwest is to see that the common fellow, the fellow that's struggling along, looking for an opportunity, gets a square deal. We have a number of birthrights. Some of us with gray heads, when we were born, had more birthrights than we have today. We had the right to go out and locate, if we could find an unappropriated piece of public land, whether it had timber on it or not; we had the birthright of homesteading and acquiring it and living on it and developing the country. Today we haven't that right. I was in Congress when the Public Lands Committee passed the Taylor Grazing Act, which abrogated the homestead law. You can no longer squat on a piece of land and take it; you must get it classified and get permission, or you'll never get the land. There are very few classifications going on today.

I can take you down in Idaho through the beautiful Bear Valley, beautiful grassland and pretty brooks going through it, and the law plainly states if you want to locate a piece of land more valuable for agriculture than for timber you have that right. They've first got to classify it, but you try to get the Forest Service to classify any part of it as more valuable. In that big valley it's one of the most productive grazing areas in the State of Idaho; it's used for sheep under the administration of the Forest Service, and they're hanging on to it. It's all right, but it could make nice homesteads.

But I think our system in the wisdom of the Congress and the men that passed that law, in 1872 they revised the mining law. Prior to that time a mining claim was only 10 acres or 300 feet wide, then they revised the law and made it 600 feet wide. Presumably or theoretically, you locate a vein; as near as you can, you stake it out in such a way you have 300 feet on each side of the vein, and 1,500 feet up and down, and you make your discovery where you select, and you can either have most of your claim below it or above it. That's up to you.

(See copy of mine location notice, p. 66.)

Now, as between the system we have here and the fruits of our policy in developing this country, and the system in the South American countries, where you can get a concession for so many thousands of acres, some big company, or the system in Russia where the poor humble Russian uncovers a vein of gold-he has no incentive to uncover it; he just covers it up; it belongs to the Czar-I think our system is the best ever devised. It provides, if you found a mine or the outcrop of a vein and you think there might be a chance to develop a mine, you could stake it out, 20 acres, by doing 10 feet of discovery work, putting up your stakes, and you have, if I remember right, 60 days to do the work and 30 days to do the filing after that; in all, 90 days. Each year you must go back and do $100 worth of work.

Now, that's pretty heavy expense to own a piece of ground, to do $100 worth of work every year. Then, if you want to own it, you must pay $5 an acre, and you must bear the cost of the patent survey, and most of those mining claims are located where there was no Government sections or survey; so you had to tie it in as best you could by metes and bounds; and it's all provided in the law, you must get a competent man to survey it, and it will cost you, I'm told today, about $500 to obtain a mining patent to a mining claim.

Now, there's great stress on the timber. Most mining claims are not where there is any; they're not down in the heavily wooded Olympic Peninsula. A great many of the claims are where the timber is scarce and needed. You can't do much with a mining claim unless you have timber to timber up your underground workings, and then you must have some buildings and other equipment. If you develop a mining claim you'll need every stick of timber on that claim, and a lot of the surrounding timber, and I want to say this to you from experience: that if you and I went out today and found a fine deposit or outcrop of good rich ore, and the mining engineer come along and give you every assurance that it was a fine mine, you'll have to put down $200,000 before you can equip that mine and put it into production. Now, if you think that isn't true, try it. You'll have a mill; that costs a thousand dollars per ton capacity, to build a mill. You'll have tunnels; you'll have equipment. I doubt if you could put a mine into production today, no matter how convenient and good it was, and how rich, for less than $300,000.

Just remember that, and the main thing that I am struggling for, and I say struggling, because I've been sitting on the committee and seen these gentlemen from the departments come in with their theories, their college theories, if you please; they have never been out and dug a tunnel, or as I've seen them, hew rails out of poles in the woods, and covered them with strap iron, to lay a track in a tunnel, and cover the wooden wheels of a home-made mine car with rawhide, and stand there 10 hours a day windlassing up that rock; when you sink a shaft by hand, they've never done that; they don't know anything about what these men that go forth, these prospectors, and find something, stake their claims and think they've got a fortune, go through; they live in isolated countries, make their own bread, rustle some meat, cut their wood, build a cabin, and it's a hard life and today the prospectors are dying off. There was many a good American citizen imbued with hope and expecting to win a fortune as others have in the fastness of the mountains.

You know, I live up here, in north Idaho, I never knew, living in Idaho, living in a mining State, very much about what we have in central Idaho in the way of mining. I lived up there just over the hills from the Coeur d'Alenes mining district where the prospectors flocked in there in the early days, built their cabins, dug their tunnels, none of them ever got anything out of it; the depression hit them in 1893 and they faded out of the picture. In later years I've run across editors and college men down there in central Idaho that have gone in there before Teddy Roosevelt withdrew land and threw it into a forest. I'll go into Dixie with you, on the Divide beyond Elk City, Idaho City. I didn't know there was such a country, and I didn't know there was such men in there waiting for the Forest Service to

do something to open up the country. The Forest Service have their laboratories; they study the culture of grass, and they'll spend millions of dollars promulgating the improvement of the range. What do they get? Two and a half cents an acre a year from grazing land.

They've got in central Idaho all this lodgepole pine-most of it scrub timber that the lumber companies can't use and don't want and are not interested in-that would make ideal mining timber. I have letters on my desk where men have gone in and located a mine, developed their ore, and asked for roads, and I have letters from the Forest Service telling me it's set aside as a primitive area, and they can't build roads in there. That's the big country south of the Salmon River, where Buffalo Hump, Seven Devils, Artillery Dome, and the Thunder Mountain, and many other mining districts are located. We've got an empire down in central Idaho that we should pay a little attention to. Just as the Forest Service propagates grass and has a big laboratory back in Wisconsin to study every little thing about timber, let's do something for mining. There may be more value, more wealth, more tax revenue under those hills than there ever will be on their surface.

When I was a boy and got my first job in the sawmill at Bonner, Mont., in the railroad office back in 1897, we were shipping 10 to 20 cars of timber a day to the Butte mines, one of the richest hills on earth, they said. Today, after all these years have rolled around, there's still 10 or 20 cars of timber going into the Butte mines every day from the mills at Bonner. It's the best market for timber and nearby farm products we've got. Let us develop our mining industry and build up our markets right here at home.

The best thing that ever happened to little Idaho Falls, one of the most prosperous and prettiest cities we have in Idaho, was the building of a direct rail connection into Butte, which gave an outlet for their products, turkeys, chickens, potatoes everything they can raise. The Butte mines have made a beautiful and prosperous city out of Idaho Falls. I've been tryng to hammer the fact home to these Forest Service fellows that if they want to develop their timber, and develop a domestic market for it right here at home, let's develop our mines. Dr. Thomson, who used to be the head of our mining school, now president of the Butte School of Mines, wrote some very splendid articles on the Idaho mineral veins and big mineralized dikes and low-grade gold deposits in central Idaho. I, your Congressman, in an effort to convince Chief Forester Silcox, of the Forest Service, that he should do something for mining, went to the library of the Bureau of Mines and got copies of the engineering and mining journals from the files containing Dr. Thomson's articles and laid them on the desk of Mr. Silcox, the Chief Forester, to convince the Forest Service they had values underground as well as on top of the ground, and that we had something to develop in our mountains that would make Idaho great and build up the Northwest.

We have got to get a change of policy, gentlemen, from the Bureau of Land Management and the Forest Service, if we are to develop our country. We must keep the door of opportunity open to our citizens. We want to keep hope alive in the breast of the fellow getting a start in the world. We want to tell him if he goes forth and finds minerals on the públic land it's going to be his.