abandoned the idea. I think that if that question ever arises with the Commissioner of the General Land Office you will find that to be the opinion of the officials in that division.

I noticed in the press reports of your meetings that at one of the meetings some remarks were made on the 640-acre homestead grazing act, and I listened with much interest to a statement made by one of the witnesses who appeared before you of the effect of this act upon the livestock industry.

I will relate to you how it affects the mining industry. It has worked a most decided injustice to the mining industry in all the western public-land States, not only in Idaho but in your State, Oregon, in Montana, in Washington, in Utah, and in Colorado, in Arizona, and all the other western States. I have had communications from men in all of those western States with reference to this act.

In Montana, Idaho, Washington, and Oregon in the fall of 1920 there were 46 protests lodged with the several land offices, 7 having beer in the State of Oregon. I forget the number in Washington and in Montana, but we had 19 in the State of Idaho.

Now, here is the unfortunate feature of that. These men that owned these mining claims were of the poorest class financially that we had in the State, and when a man would come in and throw a 640-acre grazing homestead over his group of claims he was in no position to protect himself at all. Why, in many cases these men would not even have the money to go to the land office where the protest would be filed. The result was that we had to raise the money from our more prosperous mining men in this State to take care of our less prosperous brethren.

Now, we have settled some of these cases, and in some of them men simply abandoned their claims. We do not know in this State nor in any of the public-land States how many men who have given their life's work to the development of a mining property abandoned their claims when covered with a 640-acre grazing homestead, because they did not have the money to fight it out, and simply walked off and said, "Take it." We know that to be the case in Idaho in a number of instances, and it is unquestionably the case in a number of the other western public-land States.

Now, we will go further than that. We will say that the 640-acre entryman eliminates the group of claims owned by the prospector or the claim owner. All right, he proceeds to patent. He obtains patent with these claims not included within his 640; that is, within the line or embraced in the boundary of the 640. Now, what does the claim owner have to do to gain access to his claims? He has to enter into negotiations with the man owning the 640 to obtain a right of way to his claim. If this man holds him up, he will then have to go into court and have a right of way condemned to his mine or claims. Now, on top of that he has to put up a bond in the amount of a thousand dollars, or any sum that the court may decide, to protect the homestead grazing entryman against any damage to his property from the development of the mining claims. Now, just think of what that means to a man who works six months in a mine to obtain sufficient money to work six months on the development of his property. He can not do it.

It costs the entryman about $18 to file on a 640-acre homestead, and he is given three years in which to prove up. This means that during this period when he has covered mining claims with his filing he holds a club over the mining-claim owner, who frequently performs from $500 to $1,000 in assessment work annually on his property. The homestead entryman also during this period draws a revenue from the livestock grower for the grazing privileges on his entry.

I know of instances where trails in canyons used for years by livestock growers for the purpose of drifting their stock from their ranches to the summer range have been covered by homestead entries and fenced in and toll demanded and obtained from the livestock growers who had to send their stock to their summer range. The most glaring instance of this nature is in Gem County, where a homestead entryman fenced in a steep trail and has gotten over $1,000 in tolls within the past few years.

I mentioned only a few cases in which the mining-claim owner met with difficulties when he attempted to patent his claims. Now, at the hearing held at Wallace, Idaho, by Mr. Fletcher Hamilton, field secretary of the Senate Committee on Gold and Silver Inquiry, of which Senator Oddie, of your committee, is the chairman, a large number of such cases were put into the record.

Senator ODDIE. Mr. Macbeth, do you know it to be a fact that the best mining properties discovered in this western country have been found by men who have not had money enough to go through these legal steps?

Mr. MACBETH. Absolutely; yes, sir. The best mining property in this western country was found by a jackass, though, and that is the Bunker Hill-so the story goes.

The CHAIRMAN. Can you suggest a remedy for the situation you have just described?

Mr. MACBETH. I can, sir; the repeal of the 640-acre grazing homestead act. That is the only remedy I can see. I don't see how you can amend it in any manner so as to accomplish that. The repeal of the 640-acre homestead grazing act is the only remedy.

Now, I have been working on this question of the 640-acre homestead act since 1917. We never realized the posibility of injury to the mining industry through the provisions of that act until that year, although it was only passed in 1916. In 1917 complaints came in to us that certain people were trying to take over the mining properties through the 640-acre entries over the claims of the prospectors. Well, I took up the question with the Commissioner of the General Land Office, then the Hon. Clay Tallman, of Nevada. Finally, after having made two trips to Washington on this subject in 1921, just prior to Mr. Tallman's having gone out of office, I succeeded in inducing him to include this provision in the filing blank. Here is the amendment I succeeded in inducing him to attach to this filing blank: "I further state that no part of said land is claimed, occupied, or being worked under the mining laws." He has to take an oath to that effect. Well, he has committed perjury if he does. Now, we succeeded in shutting of quite a number of these men from filing 640's over mining claims. In fact, so that to-day in the State of Idaho we have not a single one that I know of, and I do not

believe there is any at this time in the public-land States except in Colorado and Utah. I have had communications from Colorado and Utah that filings have been made.covering mining claims in those two States.

I gave wide publicity to this amendment to the entry and had it published in the Denver papers, the Salt Lake papers, and the Portland papers, the Spokane papers, the Boise papers, the Butte papers, the Anaconda papers, all over the West, and, in fact, in all of the country newspapers in Idaho, and we have killed that idea. But however some of these men committed perjury. I say killed it. We have not entirely killed it. Some men now will come up and permit perjury.

The last case that came under my observation was over in Haley, and I found that here was a well-known group of claims occupied for 30 years and on which tens of thousands of dollars had been expended. A man in that section threw a 640-acre entry over those claims. I went to him with a witness, and I said to him, "Did you have knowledge of the fact when you made this entry that this land was occupied by 16 mining claims that had been worked for a number of years and on which many thousands of dollars had been expended?" He said, "Yes." "Well, Jim," I said, "you have committed perjury, and if I can induce the Commissioner of the General Land Office to send you over, I will do it and land you in the penitentiary." He said, "Land me in the penitentiary! I am taking chances every day of being landed in the penitentiary." I said, "How is that?" "Why," he said, "because I am a bootlegger." Well, he took one chance too many, and he is now in the penitentiary as the result of it.

I think that will be all that I wish to say on that subject.

Now, here is another matter I wish to invite your attention to, gentlemen. It is with regard to the difficulty we have encountered in the Coeur d'Alenes in obtaining patents to mineral lands. I will cite you an instance: A well-known attorney in the Coeur d'Alenes some five or six years ago when I was in Washington wrote me requesting me to assist him in obtaining patent for a group of 10 claims owned by certain of his clients. He went on to say that this land had been examined by a mineral examiner of the Department of the Interior, who had passed a patent. The land was then examined by a mineral examiner of the Forest Service, who denied patent and who, through the Secretary of Agriculture, entered a protest with the Secretary of the Interior and requested a hearing on this case. That was the contents of his letter. I went over to the Department of the Interior, took the case up with the Commissioner of the General Land Office, found the facts to be as stated by this attorney, and then I called on the Secretary of Agriculture. I gave him the facts in the case and he said, "I don't know what I can do for you at all. It will have to. come up to a hearing." "Now," I said, "I will say to you what I am going to do with this case. I am going to draft a resolution reciting the facts in this case; I am going to go up to the Senate and give it to one of the Senators from our State and ask him to introduce it, and ask him to have it investigated before the proper committee; and I am going to have you and your Forest Service there and the Department of the Interior men all before that committee, and we are

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going to find out where we stand. We are going to see if the mining men of the West who haven't a dollar, like those men, are to be ground to pieces here in Washington owing to a difference between the two departments." He said, "You are not trying to bluff me, are you?" I said, "No; I am not trying to bluff you. I am simply stating to you what I am going to do." Then he said to me, "Will you not go over to the Forest Service and discuss the question with Mr. Sherman and Mr. Knight?" Those are the two men I presented the facts to, and I told them what I was going to do. I said, "Now, you think it over two or three days and see what we will do about it." They thought about it two or three days and the Forest Service withdrew its objection. A patent was allowed.

Now, a mining property in the Coeur d'Alenes called the Oom Paul, on which the owners have expended $75,000 in development work, was denied patent. It took those people five years and a large cost in money to get patent.

Another group of 10 claims in the Couer d'Alenes which was financed by the late James Murray, of Butte, applied for patents. Well, the same thing occurred again. Forest Service versus Department of the Interior. Held up. Nothing doing. Mr. Murray died. No patent was ever allowed to those claims at all.

Now, I know another well-known mining company in the Coeur d'Alenes, a group of 16 claims. This concern has spent millions, yet it took that company three years in which to obtain patent.

Now, what I would like to recommend, gentlemen, is this: Let one branch of the executive department pass on these claims where application for patent is made. Let us not have two branches pass on an application for patent and have those two branches form a different idea of the mineral showings. It simply means a conflict and it means a large cost to the owners of the claims.

Senator ODDIE. Mr. Macbeth, it seems to me that for the purpose of the record something should be said about the difficulty of determining the mineral or nonmineral character of land.

Mr. MACBETH. Do you mean on the public domain, Senator.

Senator ODDIE. Yes; on any place. I mean the physical conditions, the geological conditions of the ground. In other words, there might be a very valuable mineral deposit below the surface which would give small indication on the surface to the average man, but which an experienced prospector might detect, and with the expenditure of a certain amout of money and effort a real deposit might be discovered. I think a brief statement covering that should go in the record.

Mr. MACBETH. Yes. The best instance of that that I know is in the Tintic district in Utah, if you are acquainted with that district. The mineral is found there from 1,200 to 1,600 feet down, and that never shows on the surface. Now Senator Smoot, by some rule that he got through the department, arranged that this ground could be held by the locator until such time as he ascertained what he had at this depth. Now in Idaho it so happens that one of the best grazing sections is highly mineralized. ́Î allude to the section of the State taking the tier of counties commencing with Lemhi, Custer, Blaine, Butte, Elmore, Boise, and Owyhee. In all of these counties there would be applications for land to be leased by livestock men, and in all of these counties, on the rolling hills in all of these counties,

the lands are mineralized, and numbers of claims are located there. Now, of course it means work to determine in some cases where this mineral showing is, because only floats can be seen on the surface. Now, I do not know how you are going to get around that. I tried to get the director of the United States Geological Survey to have that land surveyed and declared all mineral ground but I could not do it. He was too much interested in determining the number of new buildings constructed in Chicago and New York and Boston and other large cities during the year to pay any attention to our request out here for that purpose. I don't know how you are going to get at that, Senator, except simply through work.

Now, here is another instance that has come under my observation; in fact, several have, and this is on the forest reserve. It is on the forest reserve where a man has found good float but nothing in place. In order to hold the rights to this land should he find mineral in place he would locate a group of claims, you see, but he could not hold them. The Forest Service people would not permit him to hold these claims without he had a mineral showing in place, so he had to move along.

Senator ODDIE. Does that show that the forest reserve officials have not been technical, experienced prospectors and mining men?

Mr. MACBETH. Yes, sir; that is right. They were not. Now, you take it in the Coeur d'Alenes. You take just a small seam of iron running through the country will lead to a large and important ore body. If you keep working at it in time you may come to a large ore body. Such was the history of the Interstate Claim which I think paid $1,500,000 in dividends after following through a small seam. Take the Hecla with something like $14,000,000 in dividends; the same thing happened there. But these men who are in the employment of the Forest Service and in the employment of the Department of the Interior can not recognize that fact, you see. There is our trouble.

The Oom Paul only obtained patent through some influence that we possessed at Washington, the man being removed who was stationed at Missoula, who denied patent to the Oom Paul. He could not see it that that seam would ever make ore. Well, it never has. He was right in that. So when he was removed and a mining engineer came in his place he came over and he at once passed on the application favorably, and so would any mining man acquainted with conditions in the Coeur d'Alenes.

But I want to say this about the Forest Service, that I have not heard a complaint against the Forest Service in any of the other counties of the State at all from a mining man.

Senator ODDIE. Well, is it a system that is to blame, which requires something impossible of a man?

Mr. MACBETH. Yes; probably so. Is there anything else, sir? The CHAIRMAN. Mr. Macbeth, is there any conflict between the miners and other interests in utilizing the resources of the national forest.

Mr. MACBETH. None of which I am aware, Mr. Chairman, at all. I have not heard any case of that. But here is what we have here in connection with your livestock men. Now this is unquestionably a fact. I intended to get that in. I am the owner of a group of claims on the side of a canyon. Take particularly the Stanley Basin country