effect, in such case, as a definition of the true and ancient boundary. Virginia v. Tennessee, 148 U. S. 503, 522; Maryland v. West Virginia, 217 U. S. 1, 42."

On this point may we not say a good word for California? Article XXI of her constitution describes her coastal boundary as "thence running west and along said boundary line to the Pacific Ocean, and extending therein 3 English miles; thence running in a northwesterly direction and following the direction of the Pacific coast to the forty-second degree of north latitude."

In this country State legislation extending the territorial limits of the State 3 miles seaward from the shore is valid. Dunham v. Lamphere, 3 Gray 268; Manchester v. Massachusetts, 139 U. S. 240; United States v. Smiley, 6 Sawyer 640; State v. Murray, 84 Maine 135.

Justice Curtis, in Smith v. Maryland, 18 How. 71, at page 74, stated:

"Whatever soil below low-water mark is the subject of exclusive propriety and ownership belongs to the State on whose maritime border, and within whose jurisdiction it lies, subject to any lawful grants of that soil by the State, or the sovereign power which governed its territory before the Declaration of Independence."

In McCready v. Virginia, 94 U. S. 391, 394, Chief Justice White ruled that "The principle has long been settled in this Court that each State owns the beds of all tidewaters within its jurisdiction, unless they have been granted away."

Thus have all three branches of the Federal Government recognized, advocated, judicially ruled upon, and acquiesced in the sovereign title of the various States to their tidelands. How, then, can this committee consistently do other than "kill" these resolutions? To report favorably on them would be to contradict the tenets of your predecessors in Congress, ignore the terms of your treaties, and defy the rulings of your Supreme Court.

Mr. Chairman, and I say this not in criticism, there are certain happenings of late in Europe, in the Sudetenland and in Bohemia, to which I am certain no member of this committee would give his approval. Far from giving approval, I am certain that your committee to a man deplores that annexation and usurpation of the lands of another, just as our Acting Secretary of State did yesterday in his note to the offending government. And yet, gentlemen, are you not being asked to do the self-same thing? Are you not being asked by your resolution to assert title to and annex lands which do not belong to you and which have been decreed by your Supreme Court to belong to the sovereign States?

We of New York know you are, and ask you to "kill" these resolutions and to bury them so deep they will never be resurrected again.

STATEMENT OF RAYMOND M. HUDSON, OF WASHINGTON, D. C. Mr. MURDOCK. Will you state your name and whom you represent? Mr. HUDSON. My name is Raymond M. Hudson, of Hudson, Creyke & Hudson. We represent 10 or 12 applicants for leases.

Mr. MURDOCK. Applicants to the Department of the Interior? Mr. HUDSON. Yes, sir; and some of them are at Long Beach and some of them are up in Kern County, and some of them are at other parts, and under those applications our contention is that the submerged-land title is in the United States and was never passed; and that no grant under the Mexican treaty was ever passed to give up oil or gas. Further than that, we claim that oil and gas did not pass under the railroad grants.

We have been urging the Secretary for a hearing, and they have been putting us off. There are 21 cases filed by an attorney named Blue, and the Secretary denied them, and they asked for a rehearing 18 months or 2 years ago, and that rehearing is still pending.

I was out in California listening to the Standard Oil case and when I came back they told me that they thought that the Secretary had suspended all hearings on those until Congress took action one way or the other on these resolutions.

In telling me why they suspended that, and I do not think that this is anything confidential, I asked them, that the Secretary of the Navy has had a resolution introduced by Judge Hobbs, and I said that as I understand it they are claiming title, and I had a letter from Secretary Swanson that satisfied us that the Navy Department claims that title in these submerged lands. They told me that that was the Navy Department's position. I did not hear the attorney for the Navy Department in this case.

They also told me that the Secretary of the Interior and the Department of Justice had not made up their mind as to whether or not there was title in the United States, but that they believed that it ought to be decided by the Supreme Court, and that they were cooperating with the Navy Department.

Then I said, "Well, some of my applications, the ones under the Mexican grants, do not come under the resolution."

They then said to give them a list of those, and they would get a determination as to whether they would hear them.

Mr. MURDOCK. I do not believe that we are so much interested in what you have done with the different departments as to get your ideas on the resolutions before us, and what reasons you had either in opposition or in support of the resolutions.

Mr. HUDSON. I was coming to that.

Mr. MURDOCK. Let us get to that right now.

Mr. HUDSON. I am satisfied that the matter will go to the Supreme Court. If our cases are turned down, we will certainly go to the Supreme Court.

Mr. MURDOCK. Then I take it that you feel that you are in a position, regardless of what we do here on these resolutions, that you will ultimately get before the Supreme Court?

Mr. HUDSON. No; if the Government takes it before the Supreme Court, there is no necessity of anyone else doing that.

I am in favor of the resolution because I think that the Supreme Court ought to decide it. The Supreme Court in the case of Andrews against Hovey-I forget the citation-said that there is no question ever decided, it does not matter how often the district and circuit courts of appeals and the Government departments decide it, until the Supreme Court of the United States has decided it.

Mr. TOLAN. How will you get to the Supreme Court?

Mr. HUDSON. I will get a mandamus against the Secretary of the Interior in the District Court of the District of Columbia.

Mr. TOLAN. Do you think that you can make that stick?

Mr. HUDSON. That is for the Supreme Court to say. That is what we all want to know, what the Supreme Court is going to say on the question of title, and I think that the best way, or the way where we can get everybody in, where it will get the fullest attention of the Court is when the Government itself asks the Court to decide.

Judge Murdock asked about these statutes in California as to the reservations. I sent to Judge Walter a copy of the brief that I filed before the Interior Department for the use of the committee, with the correspondence, and in that we set out all of the cases and the references to the statutes, covering all of the lands in California and showing that the cases all showed that it is the recognized policy of the Government that no grant carries oil or gas unless it is specifically given.

That is the policy, that the grant under the establishment policy of Congress does not carry the oil. Those cases are in the brief, and the statutes are there, and there is a reference to the case last year of the United States against O'Donnell, and that gives a very thorough discussion of the Mexican land grants.

Mr. MURDOCK. Have you filed your brief?

Mr. HUDSON. I gave it to the clerk for Judge Walter, and it will be made a part of the record.

One of the members of the committee asked the question whether any decisions have been made on the land below tidewater and 3 miles out. I have a case in my brief, of Guyer v. Banning (166 U. S. 723), and it is quoted in my brief, and in that case the Supreme Court specifically refused to determine whether or not the submerged land in San Pedro Bay, which is called San Pedro Harbor, and I think is shown on one of the maps, was California. land or the United States' land.

I examined the brief, and in the supplemental brief the defendantin-error discussed the question on pages 28 to 31, and it is also discussed in the brief filed by the Solicitor General on behalf of the Government, pages 20 to 25. Those are found in the library, and they discuss that question. I gathered from that, that as to the waters in the San Pedro Harbor, the 3-mile limit was not considered as a part of the question, that it was inland water; and my understanding is, and I may be wrong, that the case that the attorney general of California cited, the Mission Rock case, that those islands are in the bay, and not out where the 3-mile limit begins.

My idea of the law is that you take Cape Henry and Cape Charles, and then Hampton Roads, and the mouth of the bay all in there, as I understand the law, are not involved. The 3-mile limit begins at Cape Henry and Cape Charles, and the islands that are in there are just like the islands in the Mission Rock case, they are not in the 3-mile limit at all. below the tidewater.

The 3-mile limit was started on the basis of a cannon shot, and that is not on the inland waters, but it is out on the peaks of land, the points of your capes.

It is my recollection of the other case, the California case, where they held that the submerged land went to the State; my understanding of that case, and I may be wrong, and I am checking it up now, was that it was not below the tidewater, the low tide, and it did not come in between the low tide and the 3-mile limit.

There has been mention that you can use the two terms interchangeably, tidelands and submerged lands. The Supreme Court in the last 2 years had said several times that the lower courts and counsel must not put dependence on loose statements of the court in cases of that kind, that the only thing that is binding is what the Court actually decided.

Mr. GWYNNE. Have you found any case that actually does decide that question that I have asked several of the witnesses here?

Mr. HUDSON. Below the low tide?

Mr. GWYNNE. Yes, sir.

Mr. HUDSON. No, sir; I have not, and I am having a search made for it, and I have not found it.

Mr. MURDOCK. Thank you very much.

STATEMENT OF ROBERT E. LEE JORDAN, OF LOS ANGELES, CALIF.

Mr. JORDAN. I am Robert E. Lee Jordan, of Los Angeles, Calif. I want to submit a brief for Mr. Robert B. Keenan.

Mr. MURDOCK. Without objection, it will be received.

(The document above referred to was incorporated into the record at the end of Mr. Jordan's remarks.)

Mr. JORDAN. I would also like to state my position.

Mr. MURDOCK. Mr. Jordan, will you try to confine yourself to 5 minutes, please.

Mr. JORDAN. I think that we old timers or pioneers of about 38 years, we get out and we have to make our research, and spend maybe 2 or 3 years before we find a place to put in our own blood money, our nickels obtained without the aid of promoters and sucker money. Out there in California I started out along the shore line and found myself going out in the ocean about half a mile, and located some structures, and when I convinced myself on those, why as a rule then we look for our lawyers to see whether we can get any title or not.

Well, the more lawyers that I employed, the more conglomerated on that question; and, although I did have one or two leaders of California and Long Beach, who happened to be my attorneys in Oklahoma

Mr. MURDOCK. I think, Mr. Jordan, that while this is interesting, that this is history.

Mr. JORDAN. I am raising a bunch of my grandchildren out in California, and I put myself in the light of my fellow citizens here from California, as a title jumper, and my lawyers gave me the opinion that we could file on these lands, and start from the premise clean as a new-born babe. That is the light that it put me in.

I have some letters, and I have spent $3 or $4 in air-mail letters to Governor Olson in the last 4 months. I thought that I was doing something for my State, and I got a letter here from him a while back, that he was enthused and glad to know that there was such a section as 35 in the Federal Land Leasing Act, whereby the State in which the lands were situated got 351⁄2 percent of all of the revenue that Uncle Sam got.

Of course, this thing has sifted around now, and personally I do not care what resolution is passed, and all I am after is to see things brought to the Supreme Court of the United States, and this title determined, whether it is done through Judge Hobbs, or Mr. O'Connor, or whether the Secretary of the Navy has supervisory power or whether the Secretary of the Interior has it.

I have been sitting here all day, and I have heard this testimony about this thing, but I have not heard a darned word about 30,000,000 barrels of oil being shipped to Japan, loaded in Japanese tankers, right in Los Angeles Harbor, when the majority of it has been drained just 4,200 feet directly below where these Japanese tankers were loading it in the vessels, and our citizens of California getting nothing and the citizens of the United States getting nothing. That is my position.

Now, here is another: I would just like to introduce this as another piece of propaganda, the pictures that are on this document, showing the filing along the shore line. There is not one of them that is drawn to scale, and I have spent thousands of dollars out of my own.

pocket hiring city engineers and running out those lines. They are all wrong, and even if they are right at least 99 percent of all of those leases have been discarded, just disapproved by the Secretary of the Interior, and the departmental rulings are that he has just turned them down, and they are worth nothing.

Why take up the time of this committee with that kind of stuff? I would like for my California friends to get this thing to the Supreme Court, and you know us little fellows have an interest in this. I have got oil fields to my credit that I sweated blood for, and they are producing and have been for the last 30 years down through Texas and Oklahoma.

I also developed the first exclusive drill well, and that gas is going to Judge Sumners' home town, Dallas, and has been for 25 years. Mr. MURDOCK. As I understand your proposition, you are one of the applicants for an oil lease down at the Interior Department?

Mr. JORDAN. Yes; and I will give those applications to the Salvation Army if they will come and get this matter to the Supreme Court.

Mr. MURDOCK. That is your position, and you are anxious, as I understand it, to get this matter of title decided by the Supreme Court?

Mr. JORDAN. Yes, sir.

Mr. MURDOCK. Do you want to file your brief?

Mr. JORDAN. Yes, sir; this is the brief of Mr. Keenan, and he is a lawyer of Oklahoma.

Mr. MURDOCK. That has been placed in the record, and you have already occupied more than your 5 minutes. We thank you.

IN THE MATTER OF THE RESOLUTIONS DEALING WITH SUBMERGED LANDS AND DIRECTING THE ATTORNEY GENERAL TO INSTITUTE SUIT TO DETERMINE TITLE THERETO IN THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT

To the chairman and members of the Judiciary Committee of the House of Representatives:

Various resolutions are pending dealing with submerged lands, nearly all of which direct the Attorney General to institute appropriate suits in the courts to determine the Federal Government's title to these lands and protect them against drainage by operators on littoral lands along the coast line. This question was considered by this committee at the last session of Congress, extensive hearings were had, and the committee reported favorably upon a joint resolution directing such action by the Department of Justice. The printed report of these hearings includes various legal arguments, citation of cases, and much of the varied controversies involved. No good can be accomplished by a rehash of these extended arguments. The committee's attention is called to this printed record.

It has long been thought by the legal fraternity in California, particularly, that tidelands were ceded by Mexico to the United States, and that this title cannot be granted to anyone, except by specific act of Congress. The enabling act under which California attained statehood requires that the title to public lands remain inviolate in the United States. Congress has consistently followed this policy and has enacted various laws granting lands to the State of California for various purposes, viz, schools, railroads, and so on. Homesteads are permitted. The 1920 Leasing Act permits development of public lands for mining and oil. There is not a line on the statute books that says anything about tidelands.

At the hearings at the last session it was argued at length that the Supreme Court and other courts have held that the Federal Government took these lands in trust for a State that was to be organized in the future. Such expressions by these courts (the cases are cited in the briefs included in the