Senator MOORE. You have expressed that the overwhelming opinion was that they were State lands, that the State did own them. That is what you have said here. That was the feeling among the lawyers with whom you have talked.

Mr. HOGAN. Yes. Most of whom, however, had never even read the decision. That is neither here nor there.

You are still correct.

Senator MOORE. That is just what you call a horseback opinion that would not be of much value.

Mr. HOGAN. But that was their opinion. I freely concede that. Senator MOORE. They got their opinion no doubt from just general knowledge that prevailed among lawyers who had made a study of it. I think we often express our opinions on something that we do not know much about, and we do not charge anything for it.

Senator DONNELL. Mr. Hogan, this firm of O'Melveny & Meyers, do you know whether it represents any of the large oil interests in California?

Mr. HOGAN. No; I don't. I naturally assume that they did, like everybody else would. I would say offhand that they are considered as one of the big oil attorney firms of California, but that again I don't know.

Senator DONNELL. That is just your impression, but

Mr. HOGAN. I think that is the general impression.

Senator DONNELL. Did you see Mr. William W. Clary when he was here at some of these hearings?

Mr. HOGAN. I don't even know him by sight.

Senator DONNELL. You do not know him when you see him?
Mr. HOGAN. No.

Senator DONNELL. By the way, do you know anything about the general opinion that San Francisco attorneys have on this subject matter of title to submerged lands?

Mr. HOGAN. Except that they probably would be against Los Angeles.

Senator MOORE. You think they would like to see Los Angeles lose the suit?

Mr. HOGAN. I might say this, gentlemen, in all sincerity, ridiculous as it may sound to you. If this issue were submitted to the voters of California as to whether or not the Federal Government or the State of California should have possession of these lands, I would lay $100 on the line that the majority vote would be for the Federal Govern

ment.

Senator MOORE. Yes.

Mr. HOGAN. That is another horseback opinion.
Senator MOORE. That is not worth much, either.
Mr. HOGAN. No.

But I say that is why I mentioned the little matter of the hundred dollars, because I feel it a hundred dollars worth.

We have heard these statements being in a frenzy about this and that. Out there they simply think. You are for or against Standard Oil. They don't know exactly what the Standard Oil is, but they are for or against it.

Senator DONNELL. Or the Southern Pacific. question on that; do they not?

They have the same

Mr. HOGAN. Yes. But nevertheless they vote. They vote, you know.

Senator MOORE. This is not a matter that could very well be left to a plebiscite out there, is it, for the people of California to vote on? I think they have voted on a good many things out there in which I think they made a great mistake.

Mr. HOGAN. I think they did, too.

Senator MOORE. I think they voted against conservation.

Mr. HOGAN. They didn't think so. They thought they were just voting against the Standard Oil. There were all kinds of cartoons about a shark following the little sharks. Shark was the name of the fellow who introduced the bill.

Senator MOORE. They also voted on $100 every Thursday; did they not?

Mr. WOODWARD. The ham and eggs program.

Mr. HOGAN. That was last year. They will probably have it twice a week soon.

Senator DONNELL. You were kind enough recently to hand me two documents, one an article by yourself on the Relation of the Proposed Oil Agreement Between the United States and Great Britain to Permanent World Peace, back in 1944, and another document which is bound here, the Tidelands Issue, by yourself as attorney for Mr. Pendell and other lease applicants. Is it your opinion that either or both of those documents should be placed in our record? Do you think they would be helpful to us?

Mr. HOGAN. I don't want to burden your record with extraneous matters, but I do say that I should think this article written in December 1944 might be worth the time of an idle man to read.

Senator DONNELL. That is what we are.

Senator MOORE. It seems that we are, the time we are putting on this, would indicate we have nothing else to do at all except entertain ourselves here.

Senator DONNELL. I wanted to know, Mr. Hogan, whether or not you are presenting these to our committee for inclusion in the record or do you think we should just file them in the record of the committee, or either?

Mr. HOGAN. I am not presumptuous enough to ask even that you file them.

Senator DONNELL. I move they be filed, Mr. Chairman.

Senator MOORE. Yes; indeed.

(The documents referred to are on file with the committee.)

Mr. HOGAN. I think this is one thing that it probably would be more profitable to read, if you read it without preconceived ideas or anything

Senator MOORE. That is not always done.

Senator DONNELL. The petition of Robert E. Lee Jordan as amicus curiae.

Senator MOORE. Some of us do not do that.

Senator DONNELL. Cause No. 12, October term, 1946.

I will ask that this petition be filed, also.

Senator MOORE. Oh, yes. Just filed, not copied in the record.
Senator DONNELL. That is correct.

(The petition referred to is on file with the committee.)

Senator DONNELL. There is nothing further, Mr. Chairman, that I would like to ask Mr. Hogan. I do want to thank him, again, as the chairman already has said.

Mr. WOODWARD. May I ask just one question, Mr. Chairman?
I know it is late. I will take but just a minute.

Mr. Hogan, in your reference to the Alabama case, Pollard v. Hagan, you pointed out there that the land involved had been ceded to the United States by the States of Georgia and Virginia under the Virginia ordinance and that it was a limited and qualified title to be held by the Federal Government, carved out of a territory having a population of 60,000.

You also pointed out that other States were carved out of the territories ceded by the States to the Federal Government, the Northwest Territory, for example.

Then you also pointed out that California was the only State that had come into the Union as a State, which I think is correct. Mr. HOGAN. I think that is correct.

Mr. WOODWARD. Do you see any difference in the legality of the status of the other States and California?

Mr. HOGAN. Putting this roughly, not bringing up legal arguments to bore the committee, I think all the States west of the Mississippi River, except Louisiana and Texas, came in strictly under the public lands theory. I never found a man in Texas, unless he migrated in there from the North, that could comprehend the public land laws without going to a good deal of trouble because he was so accustomed to dealing with a State that had title continuously.

Take Montana. Montana came into the Union and every foot of the land was owned by the United States. The State absolutely owned nothing except what the United States granted to them. The Original States as States had no even remote contact with it except as a part of the Union. You will find that I stated in that printed matter there, the tidelands, that in my opinion the United States never grew up as a Nation until after the War of 1812, answering your question, the Government owned all the land. When I lived in Montana, of course, there was not a foot of ground in the city of Butte that did not derive from the mining laws of the Federal Government, even where the big blocks are built and everything.

When I passed as an attorney on title I had to go back to the United States, unless it had already been done by an omnibus abstracting that brought a whole block or section of the city up to date.

So those States came in entirely differently from the eastern group States.

of

Mr. WOODWARD. That is the Original Thirteen Colonies and their territories extending to the west.

Mr. HOGAN. Yes.

Mr. WOODWARD. Out of which other States were carved.

Mr. HOGAN. Yes. Pardon me, Mr. Woodward, but I think this idea is important. You will notice that in the Pollard against Hagan case the treaty with Spain was not a grant of territory, but was the establishment of a boundary. The Supreme Court in that very case said that had Spain maintained ownership or had ownership in that land, the situation would be different, but the fact that they withdrew their nationals and acknowledged that this territory had always belonged

to the United States or its colonies precluded the theory that title ever vested from Spain, that it came from the colonies.

That is not true at all of California.

Mr. WOODWARD. That is the point I wanted to make.

When you were answering the question of Senator Donnell a moment ago your answers indicated that you were looking upon all the States in the same category as California. My question is, do you deem California to be in an entirely separate category from the legal standpoint than the Original Thirteen States and Texas?

Mr. HOGAN. Oh, yes; I do.

Senator DONNELL. If I may, Mr. Chairman, if Mr. Hogan will indulge me, I did not mean to indicate that every State is in the same legal position. The point to which I addressed Mr. Hogan's attention was the question as to whether or not the interests of national defense and security of our country would be best safeguarded by having each State control separately or whether it would be better to have the Federal Government.

Senator MOORE. You made that very clear.

Mr. WOODWARD. My question, Senator Donnell, was directed to the proposition that if the Court was considering the ownership of the tidelands, you say within the last 80 years, it would undoubtedly have held that the States did not have title.

Did you have particular reference there to a consideration of California?

Mr. HOGAN. NO. When I went into a study of this thing, again I took a sheet of paper, and I went through the records and listed the date of the inauguration of every State in the Union, and I found that there was no State created except out of territory of the Original Colonies at the time of that decision.

I think that is correct. All these other States came in afterward. All of them came out of territory that the United States acquired directly by purchase or by the exploration of Lewis and Clark and other men who went out there and practically set up the flag and said it is ours, you know, and established the line between Great Britain and the United States, the Canadian line, and so forth. That land did not come by their intervention of the Thirteen Colonies or Texas or Louisiana. The title came direct to the United States.

My simple theory, whether right or wrong, is that only the United States can divest itself of that title, and they must do it by specific act or grant. It can be an omnibus grant 10 miles square, or what have

you.

Mr. WOODWARD. They could not do it by a mere quitclaim expression?

Mr. HOGAN. Well, no; I hardly think they could.

Mr. WOODWARD. It would have to be an outright cession.

Mr. HOGAN. It would have to be a conveyance in one form or another.

Senator DONNELL. Mr. Chairman, I omitted in putting this in the file an important portion of the title, I think. I thought it was "The Relationship of the Proposed Oil Agreement Between the United States and Great Britain." It was "The Relation of the Proposed Bill Agreement Between the United States and Great Britain to Permanent World Peace," which I think is of importance in the title.

Mr. HOGAN. If the article has any importance, that is the importance of it.

Mr. WOODWARD. If you had been considering prior to the decision of the Supreme Court opinion in the California case the rights and the sovereignty of the States in the 3-mile belt on the Atlantic coast, that is the Thirteen Original Colonies, would you have arrived at the opinion that they had no rights or no sovereignty in the 3-mile belt?

Mr. HOGAN. I am glad you asked that question, Mr. Woodward, and I can understand fully what you want. My opinion would have been that they absolutely owned the 3-mile belt. I have to concede after the reading of the opinion of the Supreme Court, however, that I had one conception there that was doubtful. I assumed in this statement and every statement I ever wrote on this, every brief I submitted, I always said that the 13 States and Texas undoubtedly owned their own 3-mile strip and their tidelands.

But the Supreme Court in their decision pointed out that the 3-mile strip was not established internationally until 2 or 3 years after the formation of the Union.

I was grievously disappointed when Tom Clark brought in Texas and the 13 States and everything into this picture. I was in hopes it would be confined simply to what I thought was the simple issue in regard to California, and we were perfectly ready and always had been, win, lose, or draw, to accept the decision of the Court.

You see, Thomas Jefferson made that appeal to the other nations of the world in 1793, and the Constitution was adopted, if I remember offhand, 1787. Is that correct?

Senator DONNELL. 1789, was it not?

Mr. HOGAN. But there was an intervening 4 years in there, and it is on the shadow of that that they lose their 3-mile strip if they lose it. Senator MOORE. In the interim, there was a confederation, of course. That was after the Revolution and a peace treaty.

Mr. HOGAN. After 1789 there was a definite Union, and there was no separate existence as colonies thereafter.

Mr. WOODWARD. That is correct.

Mr. HOGAN. So there was a period of 4 years, the same position according to my idea as we are now in regard to the Continental Shelf. Until it is recognized by the other nations or at least some of them, to divest of itself unilateral character, we are just operating in a vacuum as far as international law is concerned.

I still would not have held that way if the matter was up to me. I would figure that there was enough understanding of the cannonshot range and what have you, before 1793 to have divested it of that unilateral character.

Remember, Thomas Jefferson was saying to them in effect, "Gentlemen, it is quite generally recognized by many of you that each nation should have dominion and control over a certain strip on its border. Let us make it specific, so there will be no difference of opinion or dispute." The 3-mile limit was so established.

Does that answer your question?

Mr. WOODWARD. That clarifies very well, Mr. Hogan, the point I wanted to develop.

Senator DONNELL. Will you indulge me just a second at this point? This has been in hundreds of pages back in the testimonv. but the