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Show LEGAL ASPECTS OF MINERAL RESOURCES EXPLOITATION 707 pewa district, similar preemption rights were granted. In 1850, the price of mineral lands classified under these acts was reduced to $1.25 per acre, except that leased land might be sold in tracts of 640 acres at $2.50 per acre. On August 28, 1850, the Attorney General of the United States, J. J. Crittenden, in a terse opinion for the newly created office of the Secretary of the Interior,40 ruled that lands containing iron ore "merely" are not mineral lands within the meaning of the two 1847 Acts and are, therefore, to be disposed of "according to the general law for the disposition of other public lands," i.e., as agricultural land.41 In addition to this lavish giveaway of valuable mineral land, an act in 185242 granted 750,000 acres of Federal land to the State of Michigan to aid in the construction of a canal around the falls of St. Mary's River (the modern Soo Canal). After these lands were selected and sold by the canal company ,some which were located in the Upper Peninsula of Michigan were found to contain the immensely valuable Calumet conglomerate lode, later developed by the Calumet and Hecla Consolidated Copper Co.43 It is difficult to explain the change in congressional policy with respect to the mineral lands. It is true that dissatisfaction with the lead leasing program in Illinois, Wisconsin, and Missouri perhaps had something to do with it. But, the iron ore and copper lands were known to be valuable when they were sold, whereas (although perhaps incorrectly) the lead mines were thought to have depreciated in value. This was a period in which the country fervently believed that land was an unlimited asset to be disposed of as rapidly as possible in the interest of quick settle- 40 9 Stat. 396 (1849) . 415 Ops. Att'y Gen. 247 (1852). 4210 Stat. 35 (1852). "See Benedict, Red Metal: The Cai.umet and Hecla Story (1952). ment and exploitation in order that all might prosper. Perhaps it is impossible to estimate the total value of the mineral lands in Wisconsin and Michigan which were sold by the Federal government during this period. Estimates vary tremendously.44 Although we may now conclude that the sale policy was ill-advised or even profligate, this assessment is, of course, made in the light of a conservation policy which in fact did not mature until half a century later.45 The iron ore land in northern Minnesota was similarly disposed of under the general public land statutes, although at a later date. The Mining Law of 1872, discussed later in this chapter, was felt to be "unsuitable" to the iron and coal lands in Minnesota, Michigan, and Wisconsin. Without much consideration or opposition, these lands were excluded from the operation of the mining law in 1873.4(! Thousands of acres of valuable mineral land in Minnesota passed into private ownership after the mining boom in the Vermilion district in 1887 and the Mesabi area in the early nineties. Professor Wirth47 has described in detail the fraudulent entries made in the Duluth land office under the 44 Van Hise, The Conservation of Natural Resources in the United States 99 (1924) estimates that if the government had retained royalties in the mineral lands disposed of under the 1847 Acts (including iron ore) , it would have received more than $100 million in revenue up to the time the author wrote and more than $1 billion in the future. From 1845-1930, the Michigan copper district produced 8,403,640,000 pounds of copper. 1 Copper Resources of the World 161 (The Sixteenth International Geological Congress 1935) . 45 To paraphrase Justice Frankfurter's observation with respect to railroad land grants in his dissenting opinion in United States v. Union Pac. R.R., 353 U.S. 112, 120, 137 (1957). 4"17 Stat. 465 (1873). "Wirth, The Operation of the Land Laws in the Minnesota Iron District, 13 Miss. Valley Hist. Rev. 438 (1927), reprinted in The Public Lands 93 (Carstensen ed. 1963) . |