Valdez daily prospector., 1916-02-05
.FAvORS REVISION
 0F MINING LAWS
Senator Walsh Declares Present Min- ing Laws are Mostly Good for
 EmOlument of Attorneys.

tana, IS 1rm DelleVer III TeVlslOu Ol the mining laws. At recent meet ling of the Mining and Metallurgical Society in Washington, D. C., Sena- tor Walsh delivered lengthy ad' dress on the subject. He startt with the law governing extra-latera rights, reviews the practical minint history of the west, and declares tha' conditions then and now are 50 diff ferent that new laws are necessary i. the West is to have it's proper de velopment.
 The Senator will also deliver thi address before the Senate Committee on Public Lands when he will attemp to show that the present mining lav is mostly good for the attorneys a it is too complex for the ordinar! mining man to interpret. His ad dress in part follows:
 <"In the opinion of Clipper Mining Company vs. Eli Mining Compan! (194 United States, 220, 234, th' supreme court of the United State quotes with approval the following comment from Lindley on Mine (Page 167) viz.:
 "'The townsite laws as they nov exist consist simply of a chronologi cal arrangement of past Legislation an aggregation of fragments, sor of crazy quilt in the sense that the. lack harmonious blending. This ma. be truthfully salu of the genera body of the mining laws.
 Mention of the revision of tn mining laws will ordinarily prompt Il the mind of the lawyer concernec with such and perhaps in the mind ot the engineer whose activities arc supposed to be regulated by them reflection on the wisdom or unwis dom of abolishing extra-lateral rights Unless his attention has in some spe cial manner been directed to other incongruities in the law, it is more than probably that he will extol the perfection of the system under which we have been working as the fonn to promote the rapid development ot the west and the sure guaranty of it: future prosperity.
 "The record of 40 years is the bes1 encomium that can be pronounced upon it. It has admirably served tho purpose with which it was designed to promote the rapid development o a wild, unexplored country and tt meet pioneer conditions.
 "In order to have better under jstanding of how well it meets presen day conditions, it should be cOnsid cred in connection with those pre- vailing when the system which wal |so highly extolled had it's birth.
 "At the time the mineral land code was enacted mining operations in thu public land states were confined al most exclusively to the washing O. auriferous beds and the extraction and reduction of gold and silver bear ling quartz.
 The old Law.
 "The act of 1866 specifically named gold, silver, cinnabar and copper il [section 2, which provided for the To cation of quartz. claims, and it uset no generic term authorizing the loca }tion of veins bearing any other me |tals. Cinnabar was being mined a } lthe time of the passage of the act the mercury it yielded being used il the process of amaigamation, thet the standard treatment of gold ant silver ores. The prospective value O. fores carrying copper was not over
 looked, but. in those days cupriferou' } ores were penalized, as ores, carry ing zinc were at later day, because their presence interfered with tho processes then in vogue for the ex traction of the gold and silver values It was not until 1876 that the sys tematic treatment of copper ores be gan in Montana. The act of 187; added lead and tin to the list of me tals enumerated in the act of 1876 and then because no other metal haG attained to sufficient prominence te lgive 1t place, but in recognition that veins might be found carrying othei metallic substances of, value and thf lspecific. enumeration was supplantet with the general language other val
 uable deposits under which veini (containing such were made equally subject to. location. ..
 To the Merchants.