#mining claims

[williammarksommer]

Mining Claims and Natural Lands

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[sporadicarbiterearthquake-blog]

Gold up almost 500% over 20 years

Today's (11/19/2024) Price of Gold is $2,638.17 per ounce, just off of it's highest ever price and 482.88% higher than 20 years ago, outpacing inflation's estimated 66% during that same period.  

This Christmas give the perfect book for rockhounds, prospectors, geologists and fans of prospecting shows such as "Gold Rush," and "Prospectors," to the prospector or would-be prospector in your family."The Complete American Gold Prospector's Handbook," gives the locations of all major and many minor natural gold occurrences in 47 of the 50 United States, instructions and forms for filing mining claims, prospecting techniques, some colorful anecdotes concerning lost treasure legends, Gold Rush histories from the Carolinas and Georgia to California, Colorado, Alaska, Nevada, South Dakota, Montana, New Mexico, Arizona, and others. A perfect book gift and field resource for the prospector in the family.  All royalties go to charity.

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

"Once prospectors had been attracted to the available land, the state provided specialized services to assist them in the accurate evaluation of their properties. When most mining companies could not afford complex machinery and continued assessing their claims by pick and shovel surface trenches, several mining companies through the Bureau of Mines purchased two diamond drills, the first in 1894 and the second in 1901, for use by government geologists and rental to private developers. Then, in the hope of inducing more thorough exploration by diamond drill, the Bureau relieved prospectors of some of the financial hardship entailed by absorbing 45 per cent of the modest rental. To assist in the speedy and accurate chemical analysis of mineral samples submitted by both private and government explorers, the province established its first assay office at Belleville in 1898. Soon afterward, when the northern camps came into their own, the government opened regional branches of this office to serve the immediate needs of the mining community. There government technicians evaluated the mineral content of drill cores and rock samples, judged the final determination of disputed mineralization values, and passed out a variety of technical and geological information to enquiring prospectors.

All levels of government, in their eagerness to hasten the location of certain strategic or especially desirable industries offered direct cash incentives such as bounties, bonuses and subsidies, as well as a variety of other inducements. A great deal has already been written concerning the tariff and bounty policies of the federal government. At the other pole of government, municipalities competed with each other in extending the most generous terms to interested industrialists. For instance, the promise of a small but important municipal bounty was enough to move Adam Beck's cigar box factory from Preston to London."

- H. V. Nelles, The Politics of Development: Forests, Mines & Hydro-Electric Power in Ontario, 1849-1941. Second Edition. McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2005 (1974), p. 125.

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

"Both the Canadian Mining Institute and its Ontario branch vigorously condemned the proposed 3 per cent profits tax which it said would lead directly to a general depression and the virtual ruination of persons with small means. Representatives from the Standard Stock and Mining Exchange protested against what they considered "partial confiscation," and a deputation of Cobalt miners claimed that the industry already paid enough in the form of licenses and fees. According to the main theme of the miners' logic, any tax would discourage both prospecting and investment with tragic results for the farmers and businessmen of southern Ontario, a lamentable train of consequences usually symbolized by the tiresome Bean stalk metaphor.

The gloomy outlook forecast by the miners did not move the government to reconsider its tax. "We think public opinion demands it," Whitney replied to its critics. Frank Cochrane even lectured the deputation of mining men from his own constituency upon their responsibilities in protecting the investment of capital:

Let me tell you straight, as a man, that I believe the present conditions of speculative boom which you deplore are caused by the mining men and brokers themselves. They have gone on filling the papers with reckless statements not calculated to help your district. And not one mining man rose to contradict or counteract this attempt to manufacture a stock boom out of what should be an honest enterprise. Let me tell you men of my own district that this was far more injurious to the getting of capital to develop the mineral resources of this Province than any tax we can put on your profits.

Defending his tax in the Legislature, Cochrane argued that the mining industry depended just as heavily upon the state for protection and redress and relied upon the services of stable government as the other moderately taxed enterprises. Historically, mining development depended more than most other businesses upon government-owned or at least publicly aided railroads. As the industry established itself, which it was most certainly doing after Cobalt, it ought to bear its reasonable share of the burden of civil government. Indeed, the government regarded the 3 per cent profit tax as particularly lenient; local taxes could be deducted, as could legitimate expenses, and marginal mines were completely exempt. This very liberality reflected a concern to encourage future investment and recognized that in many remote areas mining companies had to provide some of the public services usually expected of the state themselves.

The separate levy of two cents an acre on all mining lands in the unorganized districts was frankly designed to discourage long-term speculative holdings while providing at the same time an income to support schools and law enforcement. Some of the funds thus raised, Cochrane told J. S. Willison, might also be used to provide the funds for the nickel and silver smelting bonuses which he introduced during the same session. Once passed, the acreage tax and the profits tax became permanent features of the Mines Act. And, despite its protestations to the contrary, the mining industry discovered that it could live quite comfortably with the modest toll.

Growing from strength to strength as it moved from Cobalt silver to Porcupine and Kirkland Lake gold, the mining industry quickly blossomed into a bright and important component of the Ontario economy. From 1902 to the end of 1906, Ontario mines yielded a total output valued at $77,977,533; during the next five years (1907-11) production soared 111.5 per cent to $164,929,057, and between 1912 and 1916 it increased yet another 62.1 per cent to $267,419,383.

...

Profits equalled almost 25 per cent of total production, and in some sectors, silver mining for example, they soared to more than 50 per cent. After Cobalt it was no longer necessary to speak hopefully of Ontario's mineral potential, for in the space of a few short years the province witnessed the rise of a brash, boisterous and rich mining industry.

Of course the Whitney government modestly assumed credit for the "wonderful progress of the mining industry" and crowed mightily about the vastly enlarged "people's share" it had garnered from this new found wealth. Indeed the royalties and the mining taxes, which the government had established in response to the "loud and ignorant clamour" for greater public revenues from this source, delivered handsome returns to the public treasury, particularly when compared with the pre-1907 revenue record. Annual income from all phases of mining activity averaged only $82,511 between 1902 and 1906 but during the following five-year interval it climbed to average almost a million dollars a year!

…

However, figures for the last years of the Whitney administration and the beginning of W. H. Hearst's term demonstrate just as dramatically the tendency towards patronage affecting governments. Between 1911 and 1916, when the value mineral production was increasing by 62.1 per cent, public revenues were falling by 50.5 per cent to an average of only $57,775 a year. With this decline the public share of production popped back to only 0.91 per cent, close to the much-maligned former Liberal level. Over time a strong, confident mining industry accommodated itself to the new regulations, and the regulatory body - in this case a pliant government - interpreted regulations in the interests of its clients. Gradually the companies were negotiated downwards to between 3 and 5 per cent. The International Nickel Company argued successfully its profits should be distributed over the smelting and refinery processes, which did not fall under the profits tax, rather an be attributed entirely to mining, Nor did W. H. Hearst demonstrate the same enthusiasm for royalties from the rich Porcupine and Kirkland Lake discoveries as his predecessors at Cobalt. Accommodation and lack of determination permitted the "people's share," once so proudly championed, fall back to earlier unacceptable levels."

- H. V. Nelles, The Politics of Development: Forests, Mines & Hydro-Electric Power in Ontario, 1849-1941. Second Edition. McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2005 (1974), p. 178-181.

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

"How could businessmen be encouraged to take up the numerous opportunities that faced them? Few people disputed the right of the state to concern itself with that question. How then might the province foster the industrial development of its natural resources? In the first instance by improving the accessibility of those resources.

Access had a legal and physical dimension. Improving the accessibility of natural resources involved both better laws and better transportation facilities. To that end the government of Ontario adjusted its statutes and regulations to remove the legal obstacles in the way of those with capital seeking land. But more positively, the provincial government strove to bring land, labour and capital into productive combination in the north by improving transportation to the region. In the case of the Temiskaming and Northern Ontario Railway this required the construction and operation of a railroad as a public work. 

It was no easy task, one observer reminded the members of the Canadian Mining Institute, to devise a mining law that would satisfy "poor prospectors and rich capitalists, men with nothing and those with large experience; those who want to find something to develop and those who desire merely to get something to sell; the miner who wants to work the land for the valuable mineral he expects it to produce and the speculator who desires only to hold it while neighbouring development increases its value...." Amid this maze of competing interests, what then was the best policy for a government to pursue in allocating its mineral lands? The contortions performed by various governments to answer that question illustrate some of the problems and paradoxes involved in trying to enhance the legal accessibility of the provincial natural resources.

At first, in order to offer "liberal encouragement" to miners every sort, the government established a different policy meet the needs of each group. By 1905, for example, there were three recognized methods of obtaining mining properties: purchase, lease and exploration permit. Once a prospector bought a licence for a nominal fee he could stake mining locations ranging from 40 to 320 acres on any crown lands 22 to 40 acres within areas of potential mineralization-filled mining divisions. After signing an affidavit certifying at he had discovered "valuable mineral in place" and had one exploration work on the property for at least two years, miner might obtain a freehold patent to his lands by purchasing $50 per acre. However, the prospector could follow another them from the crown at prices ranging between $1.00 and endure to a freehold patent. As early as 1891 the Mowat Government had recognized that outright sale favoured the wing companies and well-supported exploration crews at the expense of the legendary "poor prospector." In order to increase opportunities to include this less-favoured class of miners the government established a leasehold system; after the required two years of working the location had been met, the crown would issue a ten-year lease to the property at a rental of at least $1.00 an acre for the first year, receding to as little as 15 cents during the final year. If at that time occupation had been continuous, the rent paid up, and working conditions fulfilled, then the impecunious prospector might obtain clear title to his mine. For as territorially possessive an industry as mining, this leasing system proved remarkably popular-perhaps because in addition to its democratic intent, it incidentally reduced the financial risk for mining companies. From 1892 until 1906, when the program was abolished, revenues from leases usually equalled, and sometimes surpassed, returns from mining lands sales. In any event, by selling lands cheaply, by reducing the working conditions and discovery requirements (if not by law then by lax administration), by renouncing royalties for all time finally in 1900, and by alleviating the burden upon small prospectors through the rental arrangements, the Ontario government sought to attract Canadian and foreign miners to its unexplored territories.

From time to time the government also issued exclusive exploration permits to entice large mining companies into exploring specific areas in northern Ontario. During 1896 an English syndicate received one such permit covering 46,000 acres of potentially gold-bearing land in the Lake of the Woods region. In return the company agreed to spend at least $120,000 over a three-year period exploring the properties involved: should it discover mineral-bearing formations then it would have to stake locations in accordance with the regulations. The Minister of Crown Lands at the time, John M. Gibson, defended moving "outside the beaten track of mining laws" on the grounds that extraordinary measures were required to attract experienced developers. However, the failure of the syndicate to perform the terms of its agreement immediately discredited this avenue of access. The event simply serves to illustrate the extent to which Ontario governments were prepared to bend regulations in order to accommodate timid capital. However, once the North American mining community, attracted by these liberal terms and the success of Cobalt, turned its attention to Ontario, the miners themselves demanded uniformity in the law rather than the variety that had formerly been necessary to meet their various needs. In 1905 the new Conservative government sought the advice of the rapidly expanding mining industry on reform of the Mining Act. Following informal regional meetings in the main mining camps 113 delegates convened in Toronto in mid-December. Their first and most insistent resolution asked for "one uniform mining law for the whole Province" and the assurance that it would not be manipulated by order-in-council. Shortly thereafter, the government introduced a consolidated Mines At which among other things eliminated the leasehold system. decentralized administration, and established one sale policy in the entire province, as the miners had requested.

An informal, pluralistic approach to resource alienation seemed to be the most likely method of attracting capital during the preliminary stages of industrial development. For mining the government established a variety of mineral land disposal grams to satisfy a number of different circumstances. In fact, the government was so eager that it was prepared to entertain almost any exploration proposal. However, once an industry became established, all that changed. An expanding, confident mining industry after Cobalt demanded and quickly received systematization, equality of treatment, stability and uniformity in the law and the administration of the law - still, must be added, on terms liberally favouring the industry. The practice of allocating pulp concessions to potential developers underwent a similar cycle. There, however, political rather than business considerations led to a rationalization of procedures. During the 1890s the government had entered to a number of pulpwood agreements with various syndicates without attracting much notice. The Spanish River pulp concession, leased in 1900 to a group of Ontario lumbermen with American backing, provoked a new policy towards the industry. "The time had come." Whitney said, "when the public domain should not be given out blindfold in secret contracts when the people, in whose behalf the Government was acting, were unaware of what was being given away." Such contracts, several of which had been negotiated during the late nineties, were especially suspect when, as in the Spanish River case, "the Government held the capitalists who were seeking concessions in the hollow of their hands and could compel them to yield to improper demands." Rather than continue the private deals with a small group of Liberal developers, Whitney moved an amendment demanding public competition for pulp concessions, full disclosure of the terms and conditions, and a full-scale inventory of pulpwood resources in order that the House and the people might know the true value of timber limits and could then grant them intelligently.

- H. V. Nelles, The Politics of Development: Forests, Mines & Hydro-Electric Power in Ontario, 1849-1941. Second Edition. McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2005 (1974), p. 110-114

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

"By the end of the nineteenth century, Ontario mining policy had come full circle from the old monarchical royal metal reservation system, through a period of free mining, and back to strict, centralized regulation featuring separation of surface from subsurface rights, retention of the latter by the crown, and the imposition of royalties. In his subsequent modifications of the royalty clause and reduction of sale prices, Hardy claimed that the government was nonetheless maintaining "the basic policy, which it had been following since 1891, of combining the principle of inducements to mining with the principle of obtaining a financial return to the public." Over James Conmee's objection that the royalty robbed the prospector of his rights, another Commissioner of Crown Lands contended that "the community should have some interest in such a find," and defended the government's policy on the premise that the public ought "to participate in the benefits of this mineral wealth." Liberal party campaign literature for the 1898 general election proudly elaborated the government's efforts on the one hand to force speculators already in the possession of mineral lands to work them, and on the other to lighten the difficult burdens borne by bona fide prospectors, justifying the modest (and at that time temporarily suspended) royalty with the claim: "Practically, only the 'bounty of nature' is taxed." The principle that a portion of the "bounty of nature" properly belonged to the public had become one of the basic political values, opposed only by those with special vested interests. Experience with the timber industry had been especially formative in this regard in the sense that it suggested that crown ownership and control of the resource was the best means of asserting this principle. Industry received as favourable terms and relatively free access to the resources as had been found to be compatible with regulatory supervision in the interest of the public and the public revenues. By establishing control over mineral resources rendered both accessible and valuable by a technological revolution, the government of Ontario consciously strove towards a balance between private rights and public responsibilities like that already struck with the forest industry."

- H. V. Nelles, The Politics of Development: Forests, Mines & Hydro-Electric Power in Ontario, 1849-1941. Second Edition. McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2005 (1974), p. 30-31. 

[if-you-fan-a-fire]

“Schmidt est traduit devant le juge Monet,” L’Illustration Nouvelle. September 7, 1940. Page 03. --- Hier comparaissait devant le Juge Amédée Monet William Henry Schmidt demeurant à Montréal, qui s'était livré à la police le matin même, et qui devait répondre à l’accusation d'avoir conspiré avec son frère Ernest-Albert Schmidt et Merrick McElroy pour frustrer le public d'une somme de $25.000. en organisant quatre compagnies minières, la Central Chibottgamou Mines Ltd. la Central Chibougarnou Gold Mines Ltd., la Grenfell Gold Fields Ltd., et la Cambrian Rand ExDiorations Ltd. 

A la lecture de l’acte d'accusation Il protesta de son innocence et le Juge fixant son enquête préliminaire au 12 septembre courant lui Imposa un cautionnement de $3,000

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“Arrested On Honeymoon,” Cobalt Daily Nugget. June 1, 1911. Page 01. ---- (Special to the Daily Nugget.) Pembroke, Ont., June 1. - T. C. Hillock, of Gore Bay, who is on his honeymoon, has been arrested here. He is wanted at Manitoulin concerning mining claims.