National Affairs: Nonsense

“The public may not know that there is situated upon the public domain in Western Colorado an immense oil reserve . . . of approximately 800,000 acres in which the oil occurs in a rock called shale. . . . This oil field contains more than 40 billion barrels of petroleum of a potential value … in excess of 40 billion dollars, equal to about one-tenth the entire wealth of the U. S.”

Another thing that the public probably did not know until last week was that Ralph S. Kelley, author of the above paragraph, had been for six years chief of the field division of the Department of the Interior’s general land office at Denver. The public may hear more of Chief Kelley and the Western Colorado oil fields to which he referred, because last week, in submitting his resignation to Secretary of the Interior Ray Lyman Wilbur, he charged that large unnamed oil companies were trying to steal this property from the U. S. Mr. Kelley’s letter contained the germ of another national Oil Scandal.

Declared Mr. Kelley of the Colorado shale-oil fields: “This is the huge prize to which the large oil interests are endeavoring to secure titles by fraud and failure to comply with the U. S. mining laws. . . . Among those in this combination are several of the very concerns whose fraudulent practices have so recently been exposed in the investigations and trials of former Secretary of the Interior Albert B. Fall, Harry F. Sinclair and others.

“I can scarcely recall an instance . . . that the demands of the oil men have not received favorable consideration by the Secretary of the Interior. . . . Concession after concession has been granted the Colorado oil applicants, not because they were rightfully entitled to such consideration but purely and simply as conciliatory measures because of great political or other pressure brought to bear upon the Secretary. . . . My continued protests have been ignored or overruled.”

Though Mr. Kelley avoided specification to support his charges, he evidently had lots more to say. He intimated that he would continue to focus “public opinion upon the practices by means of which billions of dollars of Colorado oil property have already wrongfully passed out of the hands of the Government.”

Retorted Secretary Wilbur to the Kelley charges: “Nonsense!”