Mohave County miner and our mineral wealth., 1920-03-06
Congressman Hayden on Amendment
 Abo|ishing Surveyor Generals Office

On February 27th abolishing the of fees of Surveyors General in the 12 Western States.and Alaska, Congress- man Carl Hayden of Arizona said in part:
 MT. Hayden. MT. Chairman, I am heartily in favor of the amendment of fered by the gentleman from Idaho (Mr. French). Congress should not attempt to change long-established policy of this Government at this time,as has been proposed by the, Committee on Appropriations. The law now provides for an orderly way in which the offices of surveyors gen eral shall be dispensed with. When the survey of the lands in any State is completed the Secretary of the In terior has authority to then abolish the office and transfer such duties as may remain to the Commissioner of the General Land Office. This sum- mary proposal, when there yet remain in the Western States vast areas of land to be surveyed, is premature, un- timely, and in the end will not be eco nomical for the Government.
 , The total area of vacant public lard in Arizona on July 1, 1919, was 2O,- 714,785 acres, of which 13,572,2OO acres was unsurveyed. Last year r. 762, 2,639 acres were surveyed in my State. At that rate, it will take near ly eight years to survey the remain ing public domain, but surveying must proceed at least that fast to meet the demand for land by settlers.
 The Indian reservations in Arizona comprise 21,S84,6 acres, of which less than 3,OOO,OO0 acres have been surveyed. The Indian country must in time be surveyed by section and township, and Congress is annually appropriating money for that purpose, which is expended under the direct supervision of the surveyors general. It is evident that there are many years work ahead in surveying the Indian lands in Arizona alone.
 That is not all however, for there are 12,076,769 acres in forest reserves in Arizona, only about one-half of which has been surveyed. In order to prevent quantities of merchantable timber from being acquired under the homestead laws many forest 'home- stead entries must be surveyed by metes and bounds which, like all other surveys, must be approved by the sur yeyor general. Arizona was granted 1O,489, ,236 acres of public land. in aid of the common schools and for other purposes by the act admitting the State into the Union. None of this land can be selected until it is sur yeyed and the State land commission is continually filing applications for new surveys in order that title to the lands donated by Congress may pass to the State. Its .t
 Another uncompleted work of the surveyor general of Arizona is the remainder of the 3,21S,469 acres granted by Congress in alternate sec tions to encourage the construction of the Atlantic & Pacific-now the Santa .Fe Pacific-Railroad. The railway company deposits money for such sur yeys which are now in progress. Min ing claims must also be surveyed prlor to patent at the expense of the claim ant and the recent regulations govern inp mineral leases on Indian reserva- tions require all such claims to be regularly surveyed before lease will be granted. Owing to the value ot the mining properties involved, the supervision of mineral surveys consti- tutes a very important part of the duties of the surveyor general, the proper performance of which is of vital interest to the great mining reg ions of the West.
 have gone into details with res pect to the situation in Arizona, in order to demonstrate the inconvenien- ce, expense, and hardship which will be imposed on large numbers of peo- pie representing many and varied in terests if this new method of conduct ing the survey of the public lands is adopted. At the close of the last ifs cal year the total area of unsurveyed land in Arizona was 31,02S,155 acres, which is 7,500,000 acres greater than the entire area of Indiana.
 The State of Indiana was once an unsurveyed wilderness, but the Con- gress of the United States brought order out of chaos by having the en- tire State surveyed and every acre of it has passed into private ownership. In 1796 surveyor general was pro vided for the territory northwest of the Ohio River for the convenience of those who were seeking homes on what was then the frontier. This sur veyor generals office was maintained until 1857, when every township in