So far our story has been of progress, but what shall we say of the action of Congress, which, in 1872, abrogated this law and substituted for it the prolific breeder of litigation called the law of the apex? To quote Dr. Raymond: “The leading characteristic differs from all previous mining laws of this or any other country. The old right of discovery, which was the basis of the miner’s title down to 1872, has dwindled under the present law to a nominal importance. It is true that the discovery of the lode within the claim is made a prerequisite to location. But the right to follow the lode in depth beyond the side lines of the claim depends no longer upon having discovered it, but on having included its top, or apex, in the surface survey.” Should the miner be so fortunate as to have a vein which outcrops plainly on the surface, he may stake out the ground without difficulty, so that the vein crosses the end lines. But if his vein does not appear on the surface, and he fails to guess its direction correctly, and finds, on developing, that it does not cross the end lines of his claim, he is suddenly cut off from all extra-lateral rights. Or should he, in laying out his lines along the rough, precipitous mountain-side, fail to make his end lines parallel, he again finds his rights limited. Nor has this law been made clearer by court decisions, but rather it has been complicated.
THE POWER PLANT AT JEROME PARK, N. Y.
(Ingersoll-Sergeant Duplex Corliss Condensing Air Compressor.)
Certainly this is a peculiar condition of affairs. The century which has witnessed an advance from the hazel rod to the diamond drill, from the spade to the steam shovel, from fire softening to dynamite shattering; a century during which a clumsy car pushed over cast-iron rails by a boy has grown to a cable train, and a two-hundred-pound bucket raised by women has developed into a six-ton self-dumping skip hoisted by electricity; a century productive of new devices which tunnel mountains, cross ravines, or sink through quicksands with equal ease; a century which has seen the touch of a button and the turn of a wheel bring power from thirty miles away to light and drain the mine, as well as operate the drills and hoist; such a century closes with a law in force in the greatest mining country in the world which makes litigation one of the expected stages of mine development.
At the beginning of the century the mining engineer advised where to sink, the manner of working, and the method of dealing with the water: to-day he must not only be a mining, civil, and hydraulic expert, but a mechanical and electrical engineer, a chemist, and a lawyer.
The time was when he who leveled forests, built himself a home, and brought the land under cultivation, was regarded as the true pioneer of civilization. In later times the miner fairly divides this honor. Pursuing a hazardous occupation, he has invaded most out-of-the-way and desolate places, creating untold wealth, founding towns and States, and inviting vast and substantial populations. By his industry and enterprise he has not only revealed the seventy-seven non-metallic underground products which in the United States alone, in 1899, had a value approximating $500,000,000, but the twelve metals—precious and useful—whose value in the same year approximated $270,000,000. Around his gold mines—deep and placer—have grown California, Nevada, the Dakotas, Colorado, and even Alaska; while empires have sprung up at the sound of his pick and the introduction of his mighty machinery in Australasia and South Africa. In the development of silver he has contributed wealth, population, and institutions to Colorado, Nevada, Utah, Montana, and Arizona. His iron and copper mines have transformed the barren coasts of the Great Lakes. The quicksilver mines of Southern California brought San José and other towns to wealth and importance. In the history of Ureka and Leadville, Col., we have the romance of both the gold and lead mine. And so, whether the miner unearths the ores, the coals, the wonderful variety of buried materials which nature has provided for the use and comfort of mankind, he so frequently becomes the source of wealth, population, and permanent civic organization as to give him high rank among the “true pioneers of civilization.”