Being able to see the absurdity which never fails to appear in such crises and to laugh at it has saved many a man from losing his chances of going to Heaven! One day in 1913 I chanced to be at Dutch Harbor where the battleship Maryland was coaling. Had the Maryland carried a gun such as the German one which fired on Paris on Good Friday of the present year she might have fired a volley which could have landed squarely in the Matanuska coal fields! There was nothing funny in the situation to an Alaskan, of course, but I was moved to unseemly mirth when I saw that Pocahontas coal from Virginia going into her bunkers! We in Alaska (miserere!) were importing coal for our own use from Washington, California and—Australia!
Now, however, Alaska has her reward. The Secretary of the Interior has re-opened the coal fields for entry. But permission is given only to lease the coal tracts. Before this book appears the first Alaskan coal will be helping to fill the bunkers, not only of Alaska herself but of the Pacific coast as well.
There is one noticeable thing about the conditions imposed upon the lessees of the coal fields by Secretary Lane and it is a point upon which both the prospective lessee and employee should be informed. These conditions provide for the safeguarding of the lives and welfare of the miners. No operator may mine coal at minimum cost without regard for the safety of his men. The rules are explicit. The lease requires him to "leave ample support for the roof of the drifts and stopes, to provide adequate ventilation, special exits, to guard against explosion, flooding, 'squeezes' and fire." The protection of the workman goes even further than this. No firm, or individual, operating in government land, may work the miners longer than eight hours a day. They must agree to pay them twice a month in cash. The forced buying at stores owned by the company is strictly prohibited. The operators, at the request of a majority of the miners, must grant one of their number, chosen by vote, permission to check and weigh the coal in cases where the miners' pay is based upon their output.
Wise provisions these! The stormy and bloody history of the Colorado fields is to have no repetition here if the foresight and the good judgment of the Department of the Interior can prevent it. All these things lend to the desirability of employment in Alaska. There are only two spots in the country where the coal lands are in possession of individuals or of private companies. Every other inch of it belongs to the government. And it will keep on belonging to it! The Secretary of the Interior, Mr. Franklin K. Lane, is the largest operating landlord in the world. While you may not buy coal land in Alaska you may lease it—for not more than fifty years. For each ton mined you pay a royalty to the government. You may then ship your coal in a government coal-car! One can see how easy it will be for a lessee to make money in coal in Alaska. All he has to do is to dig! No speculating in coal lands! No shifting and juggling of stocks and bonds of coal-carrying railroads! So far as the coal fields and mining in Alaska are concerned neither money, politics nor influence will avail to change the situation one jot or one tittle! Amen! Hallelujah!! Waltz me around again, Willie!!!
With farm and mineral lands, however, it is different. These may pass into the hands of private companies or individuals just as soon as the latter can qualify to meet the conditions. We who know the country can realize as outsiders can not what the railroad will mean to Alaska. One may take a boat at the mouth of the Yukon, traveling westward to southward, thence up the Tanana until he reaches Fairbanks which is within a hundred miles of the Arctic Circle. Here the new railroad will have its northern terminus. One may then take the train back to Seward, riding through the great gold country—a section the wealth of which is uncomputed—then on through the enormous coal fields, past farms laden with crops, finding himself, when the end of the journey is reached, at Seward, the terminus on the Peninsula, after a journey (not including the water voyage) of four hundred and fifty miles.
In proportion as commerce and industry grow opportunities for labor will increase. The omnipresent automobile will bring with it the necessity for the garage, the repair shop, the chauffeur, the mechanician. The railroad terminals mean new towns and new towns mean business houses. Wherever there is a road in process of construction there is always a chance for women. The workmen must be fed and provided with sleeping quarters. Boarding houses, laundries, etc., are indispensable. But——. I should not be honest either with myself or with my readers if I did not here utter one word of warning. No woman need be afraid to go to Alaska, but both men and women should go wisely and in full understanding of conditions there. Both must be equipped to meet those conditions. The first is the promise, oral or written, of a job before going! The other is the means to return home at any time. No one should go to Alaska without having first provided for one or both of these conditions.
[CHAPTER XII
THE HAUNT OF THE SALMON]
THE greatest industry in Alaska is unquestionably the salmon fishing. More than two hundred and fifty kinds of edible fish abound in Alaskan waters and this does not include trout and grayling in the streams where only the latter are to be found. Most of the halibut eaten in the United States comes from Alaska. These fish often weigh as high as two hundred pounds. Large numbers of whales are caught and prepared for market annually. The fish products of the country have already netted more than two hundred million dollars.
Nothing in the history of all Nature is more wonderful (or more tragic) than the story of the salmon. So wonderful is it that it is almost beyond the power of the human brain to comprehend it. Until the advent of the motion picture—one of the greatest educators of our day and generation—few knew that the salmon returns to the very spot where it was spawned to die. After thirty months at sea, during which time nothing is known of them, they are drawn by some mysterious instinct back to the very spot of their birth. Sometimes the return necessitates a journey of fifteen hundred miles and during that journey nothing is eaten. Fishermen, both white and native, have told me repeatedly that they have never yet found anything in the stomach of a salmon. They leave the ocean and enter the rivers early in the spring. As soon as they enter fresh water they cease eating. Their stomachs shrink as their appetites fail and they have therefore no desire to return to the salt-water feeding-grounds. When they reach their destination they reproduce, which is the object of the long journey. Shortly afterward they die. Life, seemingly, is complete for them when they have reached the waters which gave them birth and have transmitted life to others. This done, they drop down the river with the current and are seen no more. From three to four hundred eggs to each pound of the parent fish is the average spawn. And yet——. The artificial propagation of the salmon goes on ceaselessly. It is compared to the sowing of seed by the farmer. The culture of the eggs in a hatchery and the distribution of fingerlings lay the foundation for an increased harvest year by year.