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Show LEGAL ASPECTS OF MINERAL RESOURCES EXPLOITATION 713 lation already taxing foreigners at exorbitant rates for the privilege of mining,88 the California Senators immediately aligned themselves with those from Georgia, Mississippi, and Ohio, and all went on record to the effect that this would encourage Mexicans (an inferior caste) to cross over our borders and rob us of the fortune that "belonged" to the American people (presumably as the spoils of the conquest of California) .S9 It was only the Senator from Wisconsin who was heard to sympathize with the thousands of people of foreign birth who had migrated to the California mines from Wisconsin alone. The Iowa Senator also thought the Mexicans were a miserable lot and should be excluded from the mines, but he did think it would be possible to include Europeans. Senator Foote of Mississippi suggested, apparently seriously, that eligibility should be limited to Europeans who could produce "testimonials of good character." The Senate finally adopted an amendment to Fremont's bill making English and Europeans who had not been convicted of crimes eligible for permits. How this was to be administered in the gold fields no one quite seemed to know for sure. On the question of government supervision of the mines, Senator Alpheous Felch of Michigan would "abolish the whole machinery established by the bill. . . . abolish entirely the provision which requires officers, agents, superintendents, and surveyors.""0 Although this was eventually defeated,91 the Felch approach by chance approximated the actual position of Congress diring the 16-year period. The Fremont bill was eventually passed by the Senate"-' but died on the table in the House."* Fre- "YALE, supra note 77 at 3-4. ""Cong. Globe, 31st Cong., 1st Scss., App. 1365-1366, 1377 (1850). 00 Id. at 1369. w/rf. at 1371. 1)2 Id. at 2029-30. 93 Id. at 2030. mont's plan met with widespread disapproval in California where the majority of people favored, of course, no regulation of the mines whatsoever.94 Apparently resigned to the complacent attitude in Congress, President Fillmore on December 2, 1851, stated:95 I am inclined ... to advise that they [the gold mines] be permitted to remain as at present, a common field, open to the enterprise and industry of all our citizens, until further experience shall have developed the best policy to be ultimately adopted ... Revival of the Mineral Question, IS5S-60. In 1858, Secretary of the Interior J. Thompson, found it frankly difficult to reconcile the Federal policy as to the copper, iron, lead, and coal lands with the do-nothing attitude toward the gold mines.90 In the House, the gentleman from Virginia felt that, in withholding millions of acres from public sale, the government was acting "like a miser.""7 Representative Scott of California went so far as to deny the right of the government to dispose of the mineral lands and announced that his state "would resist to the last any encroachment on the part of the federal government."98 In the Senate things were hardly more temperate. In April 1860, Senator Gwin of California introduced an amendment to the homestead bill, then under consideration, which would retroactively legalize mining by anyone who declared his intention to become a citizen."" He felt this would help to drive oft some 50 to 60 thousand Chinese "locusts and grasshoppers" presently engaged in mining. Although the citizenship issue was again interjected, legislators directed their atten- '" Kllison. supra note 81. ""'Gon<;. Gt.OBK, 32d Gong., I si Sew., App. 18 (1851). "" Gon(;. Gi.obk, 35th Gong., 2d Sess., App. 27 (1858). ¦" Id. at 49. ""Id. at 1487. ""Gon<;. Gi.obk, 36th Gong.. 1st Sess.. 1751 (I860). |