The Nonpartisan Leader Newspaper, July 8, 1918, Page 15

. sult of dummy entries, pre- % under’ methods of * extortion, “and UNREASONABLE " gerip locations. ~in. turn speedily passed into * crept away under pre-emption, senate and house committees to agree on a compromise be- tween the Walsh mineral lands leasing bill adopted by the senate PUBLIC .DEVELOPMENT AND OPERATION OF OIL, COAL OR MINERAL FERTILIZER DEPOSITS. Both call for 50-year leases of oil and coal, and indeterminate leases of mineral fer- tilizer lands. Both call for the sale of coal lands in the United States, and the senate bill calls for the lease: or sale of coal lands in Alaska, at prices as low as $10 to $20 an-acre. The spendthrift character of the Walsh bill, from the point of view of the American people, and its dangerous grant of power to the coal and oil - operators and the phosphate trust, was de- scribed in the Leader some months ago. Ferris of the house public lands committee, in pre- senting his 50-year leasing scheme to the house in a committee report, says: WHAT EVERY ORGANIZED FARMER KNOWS “The coal industry is pei‘haps one of the greatest subjects of monopoly known to minerals, unless it be oil or waterpower. The present law, which permits the fee to pass to railroads, to monopolies, - or any one who would buy it, has worked a great hardship on the consumer and one which can not be undone by the present or many of the generations that are to follow.” “'Organized farmers and or- gangzed labor will agree with him that the hardship is real, even if they do not so glibly conclude that they will not be able to get rid of the coal trust - for “many generations.” “The existing laws,” Ferris continues, “have permitted the coal near markets and railway facilities to pass into private ownership and into the hands of the trusts, which are prac- ticing extortion in several western states to a degree al- most inconceivable. . “The mining of coal may well be termed -a rich man’s business, and, though the bow- els of the earth be laden with coal in the more remote areas, the present law offers nothing workable and no protection to those who would press back into the less accessible fields and open new mines to com- pete with the mines more favorably situated on lands that are now under private ownership. Much of the land that was acquired by grant, or by acquisition under laws other than the coal-land laws, under conditions * where little or nothing was paid for it, is ~either being held for specula- -tion or is now being operated - PRICES ARE BEING PRESSED DOWN: UPON THE CONSUMERS. 3 ' “Other -vast. areas of val- uable ‘coal lands, exclusive of " railroad: grants and the like, - homestead; desert-land, tim- =" - ber and stone laws, and even These ‘areas the hands of the few as a re- ent and fraud. : None ‘policy—ALE SUF- UT THE FAVORED on public lands are now trying in January and the Ferris mineral lands leasing : bill adopted by the house in May. NEITHER BILL PROVIDES FOR DIRECT Chairman e e —————— ~ Letting Our Natural Resources Slip. NFERENCE ‘ committees of the Two Bills Unsatisfactory to the People Are Now in Congress—Would Prevent Public Development of Oil, Coal and Mineral Fertilizer Deposits selfish ends of present large corporate holders of coal lands, encourage and benefit the selfish hold- ers, while it- hampers and impedes progress and development along all lines.” That, remember, is not a speech by a Nonpar- tisan league organizer. ' It is the formal report made to the house by the chairman of its public lands committee, on the evils of private hogging of coal lands in this country. It is evidently as great a wrong to increase the degree of private hogging of coal lands as it would be to increase the monopoly of the waterpower trust or the Wall street control of railroad ownership, or the grip of Standard Oil on the-United States. “The logic of the situation would seem to be the logic followed by the government when it built the great irriga- tion systems in the West, and when it wrote in- surance on American ships and on the lives of a million American soldiers—to carry the risk as a national burden, and to bestow the benefits of a low percentage of costs upon the vast body of citi- zens concerned. The logic of the situation would seem to be that | THE TRUTH SOUNDS GOOD TO HIM | \ ' ARTISAN NQNEP GUE oUBLICATIONS) You have read how the United States postoffice department passed judgment on the _ League. ‘publications and gave them full second class mailing ' privileges. been anything wrong with: these papers the government would not have waited a minute - to suppress them absolutely. Just the ‘other day a high official of the food administration _in the national capital wrote to-the editor requesting that he be favored with a copy of: Roger Babson, the famous ‘statistician who is di- to write us’a letter telling of his. or his co-operation with . the government should invest a fund, large enough to do the job economically and completely, in de- veloping whatever coal and oil and phosphate de- posits are best available on the public lands, and to do it right away, when the country needs the fuel and the phosphates. If coal mining is a busi- ness of high risk, so is the life insurance business for an army in time of war. If drilling for oil is risky, so is the leaving of great numbers of rail- road buildings without fire insurance. Yet the government is insuring the lives of soldiers at a mere fraction of the ordinary peace-tiz * and it is leaving the railroad buildin e i fire insurance because the government * e with you able to carry the average of fire los; further expense of paying for offices & the women aries in the insurance-selling game. ve struggled WHAT OF THE PHOSPHATE LANDS? But the chairman does not see any chance that the government can operate a coal business, It ‘can only turn its coal lands over to private companies or firms, under 50-year lease or by actual sale of the lands, and let the private interest take the commercial risk and reap the commercial profit. When he comes to phosphate lands, Represen- tative Ferris shows that: “Soil can not constantly produce without being fed. Its food is fertilizer, and consequently fertilizer is a factor in the cost of living. The conservation of mineral fertilizer is now important, and it will become more so as the virgin soil becomes depleted. A rough esti- mate of the number of tons of deposits of phos- ‘phate remaining in public ownership would be 20 billions.” There are 1,182,816 acres of these phos- ; phate lands still in public ownership in Wyoming, 966,- 377 acres in Idaho, 260,751 acres in Utah, 130,215 acres in Montana and 119,977 acres in Florida. Phosphate is estimated to be 7, worth $4.50 a ton at the mine. e “Thus,” says Ferris, “a rough estimate of the value of the mined product in its natural state in the public lands of our country would be 90 bil- lion dollars, a sum so vast that the mind is scarcely able to grasp its enormity, and probably not expressing the full value of this resource to our farmers, and yet with no adequate law either to pro- tect this resource or to de- velop it.” ' Ferris’ proposal for “pro- tecting and developing” this store of wealth—enough to pay all the prospective cost of the war to the people of the United States—is to lease it out for indefinite periods of years, with a readjustment of the terms of lease at the end: - of 20 years. He proposes that the company which gets a tract’ of 2,660 acres of phosphate - lands shall pay “at least 2 per cent of the value of the phos- — That is to say, the government is to protect its ownership of phosphates by giving -the pri- vate company only $4.41..per. - ton, and keeping for the people of the United States as much as 9 cents per ton, out of the / ; which will be supplied to the: American farmers. g Does some farmer ask why 2 the government should not dig' _ its own phosphate, and furnish [/ " it to the farmers at cost, as'a ¢12/2/J means of increasing food pro- . duction in this country? ; Does some farmer point out to the house committee on public lands that what'’s’ good If there had Uncle Sam would be good for: the country in the matter of .. phosphate mines developed: b; " They have phates produced,” at the mine. - selling price of the phosphates”: for the country in the matter of irrigation dams built: by & v’" AR