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Icebergs from
Muir Glacier. Running an opposition power plant. Unfair competition. The
decline of Alaska.
The route
to Prince William Sound from Juneau lies through Icy Straits, which is the
northern end of the inside passage, although some masters take their boats
through a channel nearer to the open sea, to avoid the ever present danger of
ice. The straits at times are full of floating blocks coming from the Muir
Glacier. Some of them are large enough to assume the dimensions of icebergs, and
every so often a mass is turned loose which may be several acres in extent and
moves out to the sea covered with trees and vegetation, with all the dignity and
enchantment of a floating island. The Alaskan glaciers are of such antiquity and
moved so slowly that large trees and vegetation grow upon them before reaching
the end and breaking off into the sea. As a matter of fact, much of Alaska is
laid on a foundation of ice, which underlies a great deal of territory that has
all the appearance of solid ground. This account for the fact that it is
sometimes not possible to lay a finger on a spot which is not either rank,
tropical vegetation or running water.
Out
through Icy Straits, passing Cape Spencer, we emerged into the open sea, and
most of the passengers took to their berths as the mighty wavers of the broad
Pacific were captured and restrained by the curve of the Gulf of Alaska. The
hoary summit of St. Elias was lost in the mist that hung over the coast range,
and the white cliffs of Kayak Island was the first glimpse we got of Prince
William Sound. Passing the Copper River delta, we were soon once more in Valdez.
The lease
on my power plant was about to expire, and the local company, anticipating some
difficulty in its renewal, had gone a few hundred yards above my intake,
constructed another dam, and built a power house just above my works. This left
me out in the cold with a power plant on my hands and no market for the power. A
small town is always in a state of unrest, no matter what kind of service it
gets, and Main Street will invariably encourage a rival utility. Such is human
nature. To organize another local company to wire the town was only the work of
a few days, and the new concern contracted with me to deliver them power at
three cents a kilowatt. Happily, just then another payment on the Ariadne
arrived, and I was able to build my own transmission line from the plant to the
town, a distance of seven miles. The new company quickly signed up a majority of
the consumers, and then the war was on!
My
competitors’ plant being above mine, it commanded a view of the full length of
my flume, so that I was completely at its mercy, In the night I would suddenly
see the lights in the town across the bay grow dim and the voltage at the plant
drop, which was the signal for trouble on the flume. There would be a run to the
hill and a climb of 400 feet, partly by rope, until the intake was reached, to
find no water was being delivered; then a wild run along the waterway, at last
to find the sides of the flume chopped away and the water discharging into the
gulch below. The rest of the night would be put in repairing the damage, and
then there would be a week or two of peace, during which offers to purchase
would come from the other company. Nothing coming of this, a stick of dynamite
with a fuse just long enough to allow the powder to be carried through the pipe
a couple of hundred feet would be inserted at the intake, and the resulting
explosion would cause another shutdown.
This sort
of thing got on my nerves, for no amount of watching had any effect. I out a
guard in the flume with a shotgun, but the vandals shifted their operations to
the transmission line, short-circuiting the wires in the most difficult places t
find. Finally, the guard was shot off the flume, but the murderer was never
found. I had plenty of power, but the market was limited, which added to the
cutthroat competition made life a burden, and supplemented my crop of gray
hairs. The other company never missed an opportunity to try to buy me out, and I
was equally stubborn in refusing to sell. My water right, having been located
prior to the advent of conservation, was free from government interference and
therefore, under any other conditions, would be valuable. But the blight of
conservation was now spreading over Alaska. The influx of pioneers, businessmen
and prospectors was tapering down. Seeing the handwriting on the wall, I
accepted an offer for my plant and followed the stampede to the States.
The old
Santa Ana, a steamer of doubtful ancestry and one f the fraternity that had long
been condemned on the Eastern seaboard, but which was a crack boat compared to
some of the Alaska fleet of those days, was returning to Seattle crowded to the
taffrail. I took passage with the benighted pilgrims who could not find a berth
and made up their beds on the dining tables. At Cordova, Kayak, and Yakutat we
picked up more passengers, for like the New York subway during rush hours, there
was always room for one more. To make the trip more interesting, the ship’s
larder was not overstocked, and the purser, with an eye to his company’s
welfare, would find supplies conveniently scarce in the way ports as we “went
down.” At Juneau we had a list of 197 passengers, and the purser opened the
ship’s purse strings to the extent of $19.75 for delicacies for the rest of
the trip. It was a hungry and angry crowd that filed over the gangplank at
Seattle, but the Santa Ana was going on the Southern run, and why worry over the
troubles of the Alaska crowd?
On my
return to the States, I was besieged by my friends who had large interests in
our northern possession for an answer t the query, “Why is Alaska
declining?” Now to me, who resided there for seventeen years and had watched
the peculiar methods in vogue, the answer was easy: “because of conservation,
the constant meddling of government officials, and the still worse system of
‘home rule.’” From 1896 to 1910 the population of “Seward’s Folly”
had increased by leaps and bound, the gold production of the vicious Federal
license laws and the unconscionable rulings of the Land Office. Then came the
blow that finally killed Alaska. It went under the name of “Conservation,”
but it was really an attempt to gather all the public lands of the territory
into an estate; its forests, of old ago? The area embraced by this reserve
receives rainfall of 70 to 120 inches per annum. As over 90% of this reserve is
destitute of timber and the treeless Aleutian islands to the westward receive
more rain than this does, the idea that the cutting of the timber needed by our
citizens will have any effect on the rainfall is utterly absurd. The river and
creeks have their sources in the everlasting glaciers, and would flow bank full
for generations without a drop of precipitation. Furthermore, Alaska has a
superabundance of rivers, and the country could be ore easily developed f water
was not running everywhere to increase the difficulties and perils of
pioneering. There never has been a fire in this reserve and never will be. It is
soaked with rain in the summer and covered with snow in the winter.
If
this conservation policy is for the purpose of raising government revenue, the
record is pathetic. It has cost the Treasury $2 for every $1 collected so far,
besides imposing a tax of thousands of dollars on the residents in obtaining
permits. The Forest Service cannot show one single benefit it has conferred upon
the people living in this reserve, upon the people, if any, who will live in it
in the future, or upon the people of the United States generally.
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