63D CONGRESS, HOUSE OF REPRESENTATIVES. 2d Session.

CONSTRUCTION OF RAILROADS IN ALASKA.

DECEMBER 9, 1913.-Committed to the Committee of the Whole House on the state of the Union and ordered to be printed.

Messrs. FERRIS and DAVENPORT, from the Committee on the Territories, submitted the following

MINORITY VIEWS.

[To accompany H. R. 1739.]

We, the undersigned members of the House Committee on the Territories, find ourselves unable to agree with Majority Report No. 92, and beg to set forth herein our minority views.

1. We are opposed at this time to allowing the Federal Government to issue $35,000,000 in bonds and to make immediately available an appropriation of $1,000,000 for the construction of a Federal Government railroad in Alaska.

2. Alaska needs more than anything else, clear-headed, patriotic attention, looking to the early revision of her land and mineral laws, so that the sturdy pioneer may go there and develop Alaska in an honorable, straightforward manner, free from graft and free from monopoly, as other Territories and States have heretofore been settled. The construction of a railroad will in no sense solve this problem, because we think we have the right to assume that the Federal Government is not going to launch into agriculture in Alaska; launch in coal mining in Alaska; launch in gold mining in Alaska; launch in logging in Alaska; and we are opposed to the Federal Government being committed to any such scheme or propaganda.

3. We find it impossible to agree with the majority report for the reason that there is no limitation placed upon the amount of money this railroad is to cost, and it is our belief that the $35,000,000 bond issue and the $1,000,000 appropriation will be but a mere start on this project. It will necessarily deny the sisterhood of States the internal improvements which they very much need and the improvements of our waterways which is now and will be for years to come a burning necessity.

4. Again, we are opposed to its passage because there are but 35,000 white people in Alaska and because the appropriation and bond issue

provided for in this bill, which we believe to be but a mere start as to what the ultimate cost will be, is more than $1,000 for each and every white citizen living in Alaska. This sum is all out of proportion to the Federal aid granted to the other sections of the United States for waterways, docks, good roads, rural routes, parcels post, and other internal improvements.

5. We are opposed to the bill and refuse to have the Federal Government committed to it by our consent for the reason that it is undeniably true that construction of any sort by the Federal Government costs more than construction by private individuals; therefore, if the construction of railroads in Alaska is unattractive to private capital there is no appropriate defense to be advanced for the launching of the Federal Government into a scheme of that sort.

6. We are opposed to launching the Federal Government into private enterprises at all too extensively, for the reason that we do not believe it properly belongs to the functions of a republican form of government, and we believe that constantly launching the Federal Government into private enterprises will finally undermine, overload, capsize, and ultimately destroy the real functions of a republican form of government if not the overthrow of the Government itself.

7. We are opposed to the bill for the reason that we think the sturdy pioneers with their teams of mules and oxen and covered wagons are as essential to the development of Alaska as they were to every one of the other States in the Union, as they were gradually settled and converted from a wilderness and a cow camp into a State of happy homes and we believe that the launching of the Federal Government into railroad building, which must of necessity mean coal mining, gold mining, logging, and engagement into other enterprises will be nauseating to the settlers, retard the ultimate development of the Territory, and darken the ray of hope to the settlers who must in the last analysis solve the problem of developing the West.

8. We are against the passage of this bill on the false assumption that there is not enough coal in the United States or elsewhere to supply our Navy. On the contrary, we assert that the Geological Survey develops the fact that we have enough coal already located to supply the Republic, the Navy, and the interior for 7,000 years to

come.

The Geological Survey, constituted by and maintained by Congress, a great and important arm of our Federal Government, headed by Dr. George Otis Smith, a brilliant, forceful man, through a special survey under the auspices of the United States Geological Survey to determine our coal deposits in 1907 and 1908, shows in its report an aggregate of coal deposits in the United States of 3,076,204,000,000 tons. We think it will be observed that the approximate annual output of coal aggregated 400,000,000 tons. It will observed that by ordinary mathematical computation we have enough coal located, determined, on hand, in the ground, with naught between it and the furnace save willing hands and labor to remove it, to supply this Nation for 7,000 years. To reduce the problem to a smaller area and reduce these startling and enormous figures to the comprehension of all of us, I call to your attention the fact that the one arid State of Wyoming has a coal deposit aggregating 424,085,000,000 tonsenough to supply this sisterhood of States for a thousand years.

It is believed that the whole fabric of a Government owned and operated railroad in Alaska is on a false assumption. It is our belief that the committee is acting on the assumption that such a course will cure all the ills that have befallen poor, neglected Alaska. We think such is not the case. We think her coal, her mineral, her timber, and her agricultural problems will still be for solution of the Federal Government, which has spent a costly day in the field of undigested propaganda and experience.

9. The only known development and source of tonnage for transportation lines are from three sources.

(a) Along the seacoast, which is served by the ocean lines operating from Pacific coast points, this tonnage consists of fisheries and the products of coastal mines, such as the Treadwell mine and others of the seacoast. These products, fisheries and coastal mining, provide three-fourths of the wealth produced in Alaska, and the contemplated expenditure of $35,000,000 will not add one dollar to the wealth so produced or originate one additional ton to be carried from this region.

(b) The Yukon River and its tributaries are the arteries through which the business of the interior of Alaska flows, and it is from its basin that practically all of the precious metals produced in interior Alaska have come, adding, of course, the gold which lies on the Seward Peninsula. Now, what are the facts as to the gold production in this basin, and what of its ability to provide tonnage for transportation lines, keeping in mind that the whole basin of the Yukon is now served by water lines? Attached is a table of gold production for the past 10 years-and gold is the only thing there produced. As a consumer, the tonnage for 1913 for the Alaskan Yukon is only 15,450 tons; only 740 cattle and 1,880 passengers were carried in the year 1913 to the Alaskan Yukon. The whole of Yukon, Canadian and Alaskan, in 1913 only produced tonnage to the extent of 32,000 tons, consumed cattle to the number of 1,330, and only 7,538 passengers were carried by the transportation lines serving that region.

(c) Copper development on the Copper River and Northwestern Railway, known as the Guggenheim and Morgan road, and that road only operates to bring out the ore from one mine-the Bonanza mine, owned by the Morgan-Guggenheim syndicate-and it is the only copper mine in interior Alaska developed to such an extent as to tell whether they are mines or not mines. These are the real and only known facts as to Alaska as a tonnage producer, and we have this condition: The big tonnage and wealth producer is the Alaska coastal region, which contains the coastal range of mountains, wherein lie the precious metals known to exist in commercial values, which is no way served, nor can be served, by the contemplated or any other railway construction.

Then, taking the Yukon Basin, we find two things: The region. is already served by water transportation, and the power to consume would not justify the building of railways to compete with the water transportation.

The only remaining part of Alaska which this contemplated Government railway can serve lies between the coast and the Yukon River, and who knows whether there is a mine which will furnish any tonnage or produce any wealth, aside from the Bonanza mine, which is altogether served by privately owned railways?

10. These being the facts, and they are beyond contradiction, it follows that until the time arrives when other mines are proven to exist and a known mining district established, to build a Government railway to-day would be courting disaster in that what is done to-day to-morrow is more than likely to demonstrate was a mistake, the money expended lost, and that the road should have been built in altogether different directions.

11. Secretary Lane says (in the report from the Committee on the Territories, accompanying H. R. 1739, on page 3, is quoted a letter from the honorable Secretary of the Interior addressed to the chairman of the Committee on Territories, United States Senate, in which it is said) that he is convinced that "we who think of Alaska as a land not only of mines and fisheries, but of towns, farms, mills, and factories, supporting millions of people of the hardiest and most wholesome of the race.' This is indeed a beautiful dream, but from all we know of Alaska is without foundation in facts, and in the known facts. One of the important objects of the bill seems to be the development of the agricultural as well as the mineral and other resources of Alaska and settlement of the public land over any. In considering Alaska climatically, we must keep sharply in mind that at the coast line the temperature is tempered by the Japan current, but once you cross the coastal range of mountains we encounter Arctic winters. Who ever heard of a country where the winter was six months long, and the temperature falling as low as 79° and 80° below zero, figuring seriously in the markets of the world as producers and shippers of grain and meats? Did a population exist in the vicinity, then, no doubt, many agricultural products might be profitably produced and stock bred and fed for home consumption, but in competition with more favored countries on the broad market, no. That the vision of Alaska becoming an agricultural country and being a region of farms is shown to be nothing more than a dream, by the testimony produced at the hearing before the Committee on Territories of the United States Senate, Sixty-third Congress, on S. 48 and on S. 133, on which there appears (p. 550) that the cost of clearing and preparing an acre of land would be about $200. Why, the farmer or settler who had the means to expend $200 an acre in clearing such a farm could buy in the settled portion of the United States, close to market, farms known to be rich, at half the cost of clearing the Alaska farm.

Prof. Piper, on page 556 of the report, says:

I may state briefly, in conclusion, that my own viewpoint-and I think that is the viewpoint Prof. Chubbuck has taken, and I am sure it is the one Prof. Georgeson takes in all his reports-is conservative as to the future agricultural development of the interior of Alaska. I have no doubt that with the building of the railways there will be plenty of literature of the boom type published, but I think it would be something of a calamity to induce any large number of homesteaders to go there to-morrow with the idea that it could be developed rapidly like much of our prairie country was in the West. In the development of a new agricultural region usually the first development is live stock and the second is grain raising-usually wheat raising. Now, in the development of the live-stock industry in Alaska somewhat different methods will have to be used to those which farmers have been familiar with in the States, and in a way they will have to feel their way along toward the most profitable methods. In the matter of extensive grain culture. while that may be possible, I feel that the farmer himself will have many problems to solve before the ordinary man can be advised to go into grain farming. That is, in other words, I would fear that the greatest danger to the proper development of the interior of Alaska would be of holding out too roseate hopes of what can be done in the way of its agricultural development.