PETROLEUM, PHOSPHATE, AND POTASH.

The United States is beginning to appreciate the extent and value of its oil deposits, and for the disposition of these lands no better plan has been suggested than one analogous to that offered as to coal lands. I would call your attention to the absurdity of applying the placer mining law to the development of petroleum lands. This law, which was based upon the fundamentals of the miners' codes of early days, was passed without thought of the occurrence of other deposits than placer gold. However, the land department, and later, Congress, applied the law to oil lands. The placer law provides, in the main, that no location shall be made without a discovery of valuable minerals on the claim, that the boundaries of the location shall be plainly marked on the ground, that no claim for an individual shall exceed 20 acres or for an association 160 acres, that $100 worth of assessment work must be done each year, and that upon the expenditure of $500 in labor or improvements and upon compliance with certain minor requirements the claimant is entitled to a patent to his claim.

The claimant who has gone upon lands for the purpose of making mineral location, and is engaged in work looking to the discovery of minerals, is protected against adverse agricultural claimants on the ground that the land which he occupies is not vacant and open to settlement. The extent of his protection against adverse mineral claimants is, however, a matter of serious doubt. He can not be ousted by the forcible or fraudulent entry of another mineral claimant, but if such adverse claimant enters peaceably, openly, and in good faith, prospects the claim and first discovers minerals, thus perfecting his location, his title is superior and he dispossesses the original occupant. On the other hand, in some of the fields large areas are held indefinitely by assessment work which makes little pretense of exploring the claims or developing them. Useless roads which make the claims no easier of access, drilling rigs incapable of reaching the oil sands, building-stone locations where no building stone is to be found, and locations on worthless deposits of gypsum are among the subterfuges adopted to hold possession of lands prospectively valuable for oil. Thus, where occupancy without discovery is respected, large areas are withheld from exploration and development, and where such occupancy is not respected, the oil prospector must assume undue risk of the loss of his investment prior to discovery.

An objection of equal force to the placer law as applied to petroleum arises from the fact that the mineral is fluid. It moves underground. A well on one tract is likely to draw from a neighboring tract. Thus it becomes necessary for each operator to drill wells along his boundary lines before his neighbors do so. Otherwise, they will draw off a part of his oil. He is therefore forced to drill whether it is otherwise to his advantage or not, in order to protect his oil deposits from exhaustion through adjacent wells.

We should, I believe, stimulate the search for oil and protect the prospector. The Government is withholding from entry certain considerable bodies of land in the belief that they contain oil, when this has not been demonstrated. It is our practice as soon as there has been a producing well discovered, and sometimes earlier, to withdraw all lands in the neighborhood which, in the opinion of experts, are of similar geological formation. The lands on which the discovery has been made or upon which exploration has been begun may or may not be included in the withdrawal. If they are, the law offers to protect the rights so acquired. I feel, however, that we are not sufficiently rewarding the pioneer. A plan could readily be evolved by which anyone wishing to prospect for oil on the public lands could obtain a license from the Government to exclusively prospect a large tract of land for a period of time-perhaps two years-and in the event that oil is found in commercial quantities the Government should be paid a royalty fixed in advance. This method is similar to that by which the Indian lands in Oklahoma have been developed and which has proved of the highest value in bringing capital into this work and insuring large returns to the Indians. In the Oklahoma case one great corporation, however, was given so large a body of land that after the original discovery it found it profitable to farm out its rights to subsidiary companies. This might easily be prevented by regulations under which the Government would reserve to itself the adjoining lands. Indeed, I would not be adverse to granting such a license in unexplored country for, say, four sections of land, and in the event of discovery permitting patent to issue to the discoverer for a full section, the balance of the licensed land to remain in the Government to be leased in small parcels to other parties on a royalty basis under the more advantageous terms that could then be secured.

The United States will need oil for its Navy as well as coal, and probably in increasing quantities as the modern oil-burning or gasburning engines are recognized. It would be economical to substitute oil for coal for many reasons; to reduce labor cost, to avoid the building and maintenance of colliers, and the purchase and support of coaling stations. The Diesel engine can, with the fuel carried from the home port, take one of our greatest ships around the world without dependence upon a renewed supply of fuel. England's adventure in this direction will presumably force other nations into like enterprise, and yet England has no oil fields on which to draw, while we have already the largest producing fuel oil fields in the world, and others are appearing. Already we know of oil in Alaska, and within a few weeks a fine grade of oil has been found on the Quinaielt Indian Reservation in Washington. The Indian oil lands we do not own. They belong to the Indians, and their product must be sold for the Indians' profit. The one sole reservation of oil lands for governmental use is that in California, over the withdrawal of which litigation is now pending. Under these conditions it would seem of the highest expediency that the Government make such offers as will induce the proving of our lands, and of these proved lands retain sufficient to make our ships independent of the world and as fully competent as their rivals.

Some years since this department announced the discovery within the United States of a deposit of potash which it was hoped would render our farmers independent, for a time at least, of all other sources. This deposit still lies unused. No proper laws have been passed by which it can be put into use. A common-sense view of the matter would be to treat these lands as it has been suggested we should treat coal lands.

So, too, should our vast deposits of phosphate rock be brought into the world's supply. We are giving a constantly increasing volume of thought to the scientific methods by which the fertility of our soils may be increased. And the time is likely to come when the deposited phosphorus in our western lands will be regarded as of almost priceless worth. Few appreciate how very extensive these deposits are. They run for hundreds of miles through Wyoming, Utah, Montana, and Idaho, and in other States similar deposits of

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lesser extent are known to exist. We have millions of acres of phosphate lands which are estimated to contain several billion tons of phosphate rock; undoubtedly the world's largest known reserve. In 1910 the United States produced 52 per cent of the world's output of phosphate rock, and last year over 40 per cent of our product was exported. It would certainly be well if we could insure the preferential use of this fertilizer on American farms and export it in the form of farm products rater than as raw material.

TIMBER LANDS.

I am not satisfied with the operation of the homestead law as to the timber lands of the far western lands. As the law now is, a man may enter upon 160 acres of these lands, and by living a total of 21 months on the land during three years and cultivating at a maximum 20 acres of the land, it becomes his. He promptly proceeds, if he is wise, to sell it to some lumber company for from $10,000 to $20,000. The land is allowed to lie for an indefinite period as a part of the company's forest reserve or is logged off, leaving the stumps in the land, and eventually sold for agricultural purposes, if so adapted.

Experience justifies the statement that few men take up these heavily timbered lands under a bona fide attempt to meet the purpose of the law, which, as its name implies, is to convert the public land into homes. By the investment of a few months' time and a few hundred dollars the homesteader gains a property worth many thousands of dollars. Yet all the conditions of the law are complied with and patent must issue. The Government loses the timber and the land and does not gain a real home maker. Such homesteaders add nothing to the wealth of the Nation. The law should punish them, in fact, as frauds. Whether with the connivance of the lumber companies or not, they are the agencies by which the law is defeated. and the lands conveyed where it is not intended that they should go.

There is a remedy for this condition of things, and it lies in the selling of the land and the timber separately. I am beginning to doubt the wisdom of applying the homestead law to any land which has not first been declared fitted for agriculture. It is now a blanket law which is used to cover a multitude of frauds. Such legislation would also cure the abuses resulting from the use of certain classes of scrip.

ARID LANDS.

"The Great American Desert," as it was designated upon the map some 40 years ago, has become one of the richest portions of our country. This desert included a variable area, generally all west of the Missouri River to the Sierra Nevada. To-day it is harvest field, cattle range, mining camp, and orchard-where there is water. And where there is no water it remains desert. There are at least four States which can never increase greatly in stable population unless their lands are brought under irrigation. And in all of the Western States there are tens of thousands and in some millions of acres that will remain waste land, fit only for the poorest cattle range, and much not even for that use, without the expenditure of large sums for reservoirs, dams, canals, and ditches. That there is not water enough even with the fullest storage to supply the demands of all the arable land can safely be said. That, however, there is sufficient to care for a large part of this territory and bring it into fruitfulness there is no doubt. The Government, seeing this condition, undertook to lend itself to the development of these lands by what is known as the Carey Act. This was a form of cooperative effort in which the Federal Government turned over any required body of lands to a State, which the latter undertook through private enterprise to irrigate. When to irrigate meant nothing more than to divert a portion of a stream from its bed and convey it by gravity to the desert, this plan was attractive. But since these simpler methods had to be abandoned as no longer adequate, this act has done little in the promotion of such enterprise. The successful Carey Act projects are a distinguished few. Great wrongs to trustful or none-too-wise farmers were done in its name, and the suffering which it caused has made it difficult to make it serviceable, even under the more careful scrutiny of later and more cautious officials.

Because of the magnitude of the money investment required, and appreciative of the need, Congress in 1902 adopted the policy of undertaking irrigation projects of its own. The moneys received from the sale of public lands-less 5 per cent-went into a reclamation fund, administered by this department. The result has been the construction of some 25 projects, scattered through all of the arid-land States. In these the Government has invested approximately $76,000,000. One of these, a pumping plant in Kansas, is now