It's God's own country we have north of Fifty-eight,
Olaf. And we have ten times the wealth of California. We can care for a
million people easily. But bad politics and bad judgment both here in
Alaska and at Washington won't let them come. With coal enough under our
feet to last a thousand years, we are buying fuel from the States. We've
got billions in copper and oil, but can't touch them. We should have
some of the world's greatest manufacturing plants, but we can not,
because everything up here is locked away from us. I repeat that isn't
conservation. If they had applied a little of it to the salmon
industry--but they didn't. And the salmon are going, like the buffalo of
the plains.
"The destruction of the salmon shows what will happen to us if the bars
are let down all at once to the financial banditti. Understanding and
common sense must guard the gates. The fight we must win is to bring
about an honest and reasonable adjustment, Olaf. And that fight will
take place right here--in Alaska--and not in Siberia. And if we
don't win--"
He raised his eyes from the fire and smiled grimly into Olaf's bearded
face.
"Then we can count on that thing coming across the neck of sea from the
Gulf of Anadyr," he finished. "And if it ever does come, the people of
the States will at last face the tragic realization of what Alaska
could have meant to the nation.
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