Congress has unsuccessfully tried to reform the Mining Law of 1872 several times over the years, including a near-miss in 1994. It’s high time to try again.
The Mining Law President Ulysses Grant signed was the work of Bill Stewart, Nevada’s colorful “Silver Senator,” then barely 40 years old but already, thanks to the hard-rock mining industry, the richest man in the Senate. His main objective was to make sure his industry could continue to extract gold, silver, copper and other substances from public land for free...