ure for wealth
or ruin.

"In the absence of State and Federal laws competent to meet the novel
industry, and with the inbred respect for equitable adjustments of
rights between man and man, the miners sought only to secure equitable
rights and protection from robbery by a simple agreement as to the
maximum size of a surface claim, trusting, with a well-founded
confidence, that no machinery was necessary to enforce their regulations
other than the swift, rough blows of public opinion. The gold-seekers
were not long in realizing that the source of the dust which had worked
its way into the sands and bars, and distributed its precious particles
over the bedrocks of rivers was derived from solid quartz veins, which
were thin sheets of mineral material inclosed in the foundation rocks of
the country. Still in advance of any enactments by legislature or
Congress, the common sense of the miners, which had proved strong enough
to govern with wisdom the ownership of placer mines, rose to meet the
question of lode claims and sheet-like veins of quartz, and provided
that a claim should consist of a certain horizontal block of the vein,
however it might run, but extending indefinitely downward, with a strip
of surface on, or embracing the vein's outcrop, for the placing of
necessary machinery and buildings. Under this theory, the lode was the
property, and the surface became a mere easement.

"This early California theory of a mining claim, consisting of a certain
number of running feet of vein, with a strip of land covering the
surface length of the claim, is, the obvious foundation for the Federal
legislation and present system of public disposition and private
ownership of the mineral lands west of the Missouri River. Contrasted
with this is the mode of disposition of mineral-bearing lands east of
the Missouri River, where the common law has been the rule, and where
the surface tract has always carried with it all minerals vertically
below it.

"The great coal, copper, lead and zinc wealth east of the Rocky
Mountains has all passed with the surface titles, and there can be
little doubt if California had been contiguous to the eastern metallic
regions, and its mineral development progressed naturally with the
advantage of homemaking settlements, the power of common-law precedent
would have governed its whole mining history. But California was one of
these extraordinary historic exceptions that defy precedent and create
origin