Mohave County miner and our mineral wealth., 1921-05-20


 
 If you saint" mining engineer you :annot judge of the merits of min ng case, is the theory that editor T. A. Ricard of the Mining and Scientific Press enunciates in passing upon the recent decision of Judge Bollinger in he Tom Reed United Eastern case. The position taken by our esteemed .sntemporary in this case is peculiar sne, especially from his formerly eN- pressed viewpoint, given in passing Spon the testimony of the mining en- gineers in the case of the Utah Apex Mining company against the Utah Consolidated Mining company, which vas decided in the courts about year ago Editorially the same editor stated that it was remarkable that . half dozen mining engineers eln- ployed on each side of a mining case should take diametrically opposite points of view as their employment directed, although these engineers had been schooled in khe same school, had garnered knowledge from the same text books and could not reasonably be supposed to have divergent views on any of the things that they had become versed in in their years in field work and laboratory. And yet in this case engineers for one side swore that black was white, and the engineers of the other side swore that white was black. Of course, when the editor was taken to task for the structure he apologized, but neverthe- less he knew he was right and we, who are outside the sacred precincts of the elect, knew he was right. Elm ployment cuts just as much figure in the every day life of an engineer, no matter what his ability may be, as it does in the life of 'the layman. A man to maintain his employment must be loyal to his employer or he suf- fers in consequence.
 The last issue of the Mining and Scientific Press not only takes a slam at our superior court, but at every court in the land. How many judges, think you, are there learned in geo. logy and mineralogy, and how many of these jurists think you would be benefited by such knowledge in the trial of mining case, apex or other dissension, when there are wide diff ferences of opinion among the men who have made these subjects a life. study. The other day we read learned dissertation on Judge Bol- fingers decision by the editor of the New York Mining and Engineering Journal in which the opinion was ex- pressed that the decision was just one and would stand the testsof the upper courts, and which quoted ibsr- ally from the high lights of the de- cision. And. one of the things that struck the editor of the Engineering and Mining Journal as being an ex-; precision that would stand, was just the thing that MT. Ricard sneered at that a fault was a "vein which was not mineralizedr.. Now, under our i'm. terpretation of mining law, we must say that the laws relating to mining were made Tor the miner and not for the engineer. eMr. Ricard.> believes otherwise, but that belief is not law. Had there been no mining there would, have been no occasion for laws, and had there been no mining there would have been no occasion for mining en-' gineers. And another proposition on which Ricard dwells is that the theory of the geologist must be taken as true, but as each geologist had a diff ferent theory, which one should ob-. tain, has never entered the grey mat ter in the cranium of the editor. % We are not taking sides in. the con troversy, but we. are controSerting the position of the editor of the Mining and Scientific Press. We believe that any judge 'wM has the necessary brains can discern the right from the wrong, whether it, ,be-sa water right case or an apex case. The fact that never in the history of legal juris- prudence has case of the character of that involved in the Tom Reed United Eastern controversy come be- fore a court, does not alter. the con. ditions surrounding apex rights. The burden of proof is upon the party as- serting the right, and this burden was on the Tom Reed. There were two apexes, one on the Big Jim claim and the other upon the claim of the Tom Reed. It was readily perceived that the veins in both properties'were iden- tical; that there was a drag from one vein to the other, but the bottom of this drag was 400 feet below the apex of the Big Jim vein, and to open the Big Jim it would be necessary to drive across country to cut it, and if such crosscut was carried from the bottom of the Tom Reed fault block it would cut the Big Jim at a depth below that level, and the vein would have to soon- CT or later be opened to the surface, which surface is within the side lines of the Big Jim. And again, the tes- tipiony showed that it was probable