After waiting and hoping through another long winter, with their best
men fighting for Alaska's salvation at Washington, word was traveling
from mouth to mouth, from settlement to settlement, and from range to
range, that the Bureaucracy which misgoverned them from thousands of
miles away was not lifting a hand to relieve them. Federal
office-holders refused to surrender their deadly power, and their
strangling methods were to continue. Coal, which should cost ten dollars
a ton if dug from Alaskan mines, would continue to cost forty dollars;
cold storage from Nome would continue to be fifty-two dollars a ton,
when it should be twenty. Commercial brigandage was still given letters
of marque. Bureaus were fighting among themselves for greater power, and
in the turmoil Alaska was still chained like a starving man just outside
the reach of all the milk and honey in a wonderful land. Pauperizing,
degrading, actually killing, the political misrule that had already
driven 25 per cent of Alaska's population from their homes was to
continue indefinitely. A President of the United States had promised to
visit the mighty land of the north and see with his own eyes. But would
he come? There had been other promises, many of them, and promises had
always been futile. But it was a hope that crept through Alaska, and
upon this hope men whose courage never died began to build.
Pages:
124
125
126
127
128
129
130
131
132
133
134
135
136
137
138
139
140
141
142
143
144
145
146
147
148