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Show 704 HISTORY OK PUBLIC LAND LAW DEVELOPMENT puted the common assertion of historians that leasing eventually Tailed simply because the cost of administration greatly exceeded the royalties received by the Federal government. It is true that President Polk went on record to that effect in his first annual message to Congress on December 2, 1845,-° in which he advocted the abandonment of leasing in the Upper Mississippi mines. Mr. Wright has demonstrated that the reasons for the failure are a great deal more complicated. What follows is, I hope, a fairly accurate (although necessarily brief) summary of Wright's findings. They are worth stating in any history of American mining law because they shed an entirely new light on the early leasing period. By the mid-1820's, miners (including many from Missouri) began to Hock into an area in southwestern Wisconsin and northwestern Illinois known variously as the Upper Mississippi, Galena, or Fever River mines. The public mines, by this time, were under the Ordnance Bureau of the War Department which had designated Lt. Martin Thomas as supervisor. The distinctive thing about the Thomas regime was that specific regulations governing mining were put into effect. The legislative powers of the supervisor seem unbelievable today. They ranged from prescribing the terms of the leases to price-fixing. Thomas obtained permission to abandon the practice, originally advocated by President Jefferson, of collecting the customary 10 per- *!4 Messages and Papers of the Presidents 410 (Richardson cd. 1897) : "The present system of managing the mineral lands of the United States is believed to be radically defective. . . . The system of granting leases has proved to be ... unprofitable to the Government.....According to the official records, the amount of rents received by the Government for the years 1841, 1842, 1843, and 1844 was $6,354.74, while the expenses of the system during the same period, including salaries of superintendents, agents, clerks, and incidental expenses, were $26,111.11, the income being less than one-fourth of the expenses." cent royalty on all metal produced in pure lead, a highly unrealistic requirement since few miners could afford their own smelters. Instead, he advocated government-licensed smelters, to whom miners (operating under digging permits) were required to sell their ore. Both the smelters and the mines were regulated, with the smelters paying the royalty in pure lead directly to the government. The program was successful from the standpoint of the government as well as the miners and smelters. Wright estimates that by [tine 1829, 4,253 digging permits and 52 smelter licenses had been issued.-7 lt is true that at times Lt. Thomas felt constrained to take rather extreme measures to settle differences between the miners and the smelters. For one thing, the latter had a government-protected buyers' market which enabled them to set ore prices, knowing full well that the miners could sell to no one else. To placate the miners, Lt. Thomas peremptorily stabilized the price which the smelters were required to pay the miners lor their ore. Up to 1828, production steadily increased, and there was every indication that the government received full payment of the rentals owed by the smelters.-* After 1829, the government leasing program deteriorated rapidly. Numerous factors combined to undermine the system. In the first place, the area suffered from a depression. Because of overproduction, the price of lead declined seriously in the years that followed, while food prices skyrocketed. Agitation for the sale of nonmineral land in the area so that agricultural production might be increased was inevitable. In 1834, Congress finally opened these lands for entry. 2!l Miners also petitioned for and received a reduction in the royalty to fi percent, which only augmented the already glutted lead market. Because of the gen- "WlKHT, supra note 14 at 17-18. -s Id. at 32. a>4STAT. 686 (1834). |