III
LAWS RELATING TO DISTRIBUTION AND TRANSPORTATION OF MINERAL RESOURCES
Under this heading come governmental regulations affecting directly or indirectly the transportation and the destination of mineral products. Transportation rates, tariffs, zoning, duties, and international trade agreements of all sorts have vital effects on distribution. In framing any of these measures for a mineral resource, it is desirable to know all about the character of the raw material, its physical occurrence and distribution, and the possibilities for future development. In adjusting the scientific naming and classification of mineral materials with the crude names and classifications used commercially—as in tariffs, in import and export laws, in reports of revenue collectors, in railway and ship rates, etc.—the geologic information is likewise necessary.
Heretofore, the formulation of measures concerning mineral distribution has often not been done on a scientific and impartial basis; but in recent years geologists have been called on more frequently for aid and advice, as a means of checking or verifying the special pleadings of the different industries. The rude disturbance of trade routes during the war brought home the necessity of basing control of distribution of mineral products on fundamental facts of geology and geography; thus it was that geologists had a considerable voice in the vast number of special measures taken for war purposes by such organizations as the Shipping Board, the War Trade Board, the War Industries Board, and other public organizations. The same was true in relation to the mineral resource questions at the Peace Conference. In the reconstructive measures of the future, a still larger use of scientific considerations may be looked for. Further suggestions as to the relation of geology to laws affecting distribution appear in the chapter on International Aspects (Chapter XVIII).
IV
OTHER RELATIONS OF GEOLOGY TO LAW
It is often assumed that the economic geologist is exclusively interested in mineral resources. However, there are varied applications of geology outside of the mineral resource field,—to many kinds of engineering and construction operations, to soils, to water resources, and to transportation,—any of which may develop legal problems requiring geologic service. A few illustrative cases follow.
The classification of mineral materials in contracts presents many difficulties. A contract for a railway cut, for a canal, or for any other kind of excavation may specify different prices for removing different mineral materials. Too often these are stated in extremely crude and arbitrary terms, such as rock, hard rock, hardpan, earth, dirt, etc., without regard to the actual variety of materials to be dealt with. When, therefore, in the case of the Chicago drainage canal, the contractor encountered a soft shale and claimed compensation for rock excavation, geologists played a considerable part in the extensive litigation that followed in the attempt to define the facts of nature in terms of a contract which did not recognize them. In a railway cut through glacial drift or till, a contractor came suddenly upon a mass of till which had been so thoroughly cemented in place as to have all the resistance of rock. Litigation was then necessary to decide whether this should be classified as dirt or rock.
Rock and dirt slides of all kinds, met with in open-pit mining, canals, and other excavations, present engineering problems with a geologic basis. The kinds of rocks, their strength, porosity, and moisture content, the effects of weathering, and the structural conditions must be determined in order to ascertain the cause of the slides, and are features which figure largely in litigation arising from troubles of this sort.
Both federal and state laws give the right to lateral and vertical support. When, therefore, adjacent or underlying excavations cause earth movements in a neighbor's property, litigation is likely to ensue and the geologist is likely to be called in. The long-wall method of coal mining, extensively practiced in certain parts of the United States, is slowly withdrawing support from the ground overlying the coal seams, resulting in damages to surface structures and in some cases to overlying mineral deposits. Extensive litigation has been the result, and the future seems to promise more of it. In certain metal-mining camps, where considerable amounts of materials have been mined to great depths, caves and cracking in the surface are reaching over unexpectedly wide areas, again threatening litigation.