Waterlogged

For almost 150 years, the U.S. had got along well enough without deciding who owned the mineral rights to land beneath its coastal waters--from low-water mark to the three-mile limit. Last week Congress voted to decide it, once & for all.

There had been lawsuits aplenty about lands under water, and more than 50 cases had gone to the Supreme Court. But the U.S. Government was not a party to any of them, and the nearest approach to a mineral-rights case was one involving Florida sponge-fishers. There was not much money in sponges, and at that time (1912) the U.S. was getting along on very little oil.

Ickes Agrees. Even after it was discovered that oilfields ran out beneath the sea and oil could be recovered profitably from them, it was taken for granted that the states owned the submerged lands. So the states leased some of them to oil companies. They took out the rich oil and richer profits, and paid moderate royalties for the privilege. Even Curmudgeon Harold Ickes, who as Secretary of the Interior seldom agreed with anybody, agreed in 1933 that this seemed to be "the settled law."

Then a drive was begun to declare federal sovereignty and ownership over the submerged lands. Partly it was inspired by would-be claim-jumpers who saw a chance to muscle in on a gusher of oil and dollars. Partly it was the work of the Navy which wanted to have a great reserve of oil set aside for war. The claim-seekers and the Navy soon had "Honest Harold" on their side, for whatever that might be worth. In dealing with congressional committees, it was not much.

Ickes, said Ickes, had been wrong: there was a real question whether the states or the U.S. owned land under "the marginal sea"; the Supreme Court should be asked to decide the issue. At long last the Government filed its suit to get title to the undersea property.

Pauley Disagrees. That brought Edwin W. Pauley into the picture. He had made a fortune out of oil taken from California's tidelands field. He argued that it would be a bad thing to let the issue go to the Supreme Court: the Government's lawsuit, filed by bumbling Attorney General Tom Clark, was clouding the titles of oil companies (such as his). Therefore, Congress should pass a resolution renouncing any U.S. interest in submerged lands. Not so much because of what he did as because of how he did it, Pauley could not become Under Secretary of the Navy (TIME, March 18).

But Pauley and other advocates of states' rights had done their work well. The attorney general of California got 45 other state attorneys general behind him in a move to get Congress to decide the issue, without waiting for the Supreme Court. Last week the Senate, which had once unanimously favored letting the Court determine the question, voted 44 to 34 to settle it at once. Its decision: the states owned the land. The House went along, 188 to 67.

The odd part of it all was that President Truman, who had stood stoutly by States' Rightsman Pauley, was believed certain to veto the bill. He thought it a matter for the Supreme Court to decide.

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