Year: 1879

! Good Sense.

 A correspondent of the Mining anC Scientific Press, writing from Pioneer District, views things in the following light:

 THIS COUNTRY NEEDS CAPITAL"

 Ever since the discovery of the pre- cious metals, in this part of the Terri tory, has been the loud and incessant cry of claim-holders. Locations thai could have been made to pay their own way from the beginning, have been permitted to lie idle while the owners exhausted their time aud means in hunting for capital. The time was when men located mines for the pur. pose of working them on their merits, the strong and willing hand of the miner rarely failing then to wrest its reward from the wealth they contain ed; but times have changed, and with them men also. The spirit of specula- ton Is rife among all classes, and the honest miner has not escaped Its blight. He no longer looks upon his mine as the legitimate means of making money by the sweat of his brow, but as a thing created for the express purI Iose of being sold, and the "lucky miner I" Is now the one wno gets the highest price for the poorest claim. This mania for selling mines gave rise to the countless fables of untold wealth found here on every hillside. These reports were persisted in and indus trlOusly circulated tO attract the alten. tion of capitalists, whose money was not so sOrely needed for the develop ment of the mines as to pay the big prices set upon them. The effect was 10 bring here great influx of men of various classes. Many of them were indeed capitalists or their agents searching for investments, and these, for the most part, finding nothing ap- preaching what they had been led to expect, condemned the whole thing without stopping long enough to learn the true value Of the country.

 

 The mining lands being as much al part of the public domain as any other, they should be as jealOusly guarded ! against the Wiles of the speculaturl and grabber. The law is very strict in | regard tO the amount of agricultural land which one person can locate and hold, the location of second claim implying the desertiOn of the first. But 1t Is silent In regard to the number of mining claims which one person can hold, the custom being, and the courts maintaining, that 1t is without limit. This is repugnant not only to the spirit of our government, but to common sense and justice, for it en- aDies few men who happen to come early into mining region to lock up the treasures of a whole district and levy q sort of tribute or blackmaIl on those who come later Nor is this the only defective feature of the law. Itl allows one year in which to perform Sl00 worth of work on a claim, or gives man the privilege of holding any amount of mining land

 

 on it whatever, while the custom, which is to place the mosl liberal construction on tue law, only lggraYates the matter, by holding that if man be on the ground with tools it the time the year expires, he may go on with the work and hold the claim for the second year. The loose customs which prevail here are, in act, a great injury 10 the country and in conflict with the law. ltI $ not considered necessary to mark he boundary of a location, as the law provides Two or three small mOnu. nents with single notice indicating { he general directions of the lines are to bc enough, so that many | claims are made tapping on each other. $ The clause which presumes that a min al-bearing vein shall be discovered before it is claimed, is also entirely ig. lored, the rule being to claim the ground and take the chance of fildIngI on it aiterward. The re- | Iuirements of the law in this particular re very generally lodged It is no I uncommon thing for several prOSpec- |! ors, or more properly speaking specu, ators, holding d dozen claims. each to 'recOncert arrangements whereby they rlOcate each for the other when the ime for doing the assessment work ex- tires, the ground being afterward deed q back, and the law cheated of its ights for another year. u These loose ways, in general, are not 2 nly causing present trouble, but they U re sowing the seeds of endless future litigation.