The Birmingham age-herald., 1911-05-14

Copyright, 1911, by Frank G. Carpenter.)
 Washington, D. c. T WRITE today of one of the best investments, of Uncle Sam, Patriarch. ! Our fatherly relative Is a shrewd sneculator. He makes millions in real es- tate, and his chief land investments have paid many thousand per cent. The first was the Louisiana purchase by which the French sold us a territory ten times as large as the state of Illinois That block of land cost about cents an acre. It is now worth 80 and upward per acre, and 1t annually yields crops to the amount of thousands of millions of dol lars1 It is producing more than a billion bushels of corn and two hundred and fify million bushels of wheat every year and is feeding live stock valued at over nine hundred millions.
 The Wealth of Alaska
 The purchase I speak of today is that of Alaska. Uncle Sam bought it of Rus sia for less than cents an acre forty-four years ago. He has already realized more than sixty times the :. amount of his original investment and he does not yet know what he owns. The land is netting us 400 percent every year and it will go up to 1000 per cent in the future. We paid for it a little more than seven l01lllOn uOllafS. We nave alreaQy taken out over four hundred millions. We
 got more than the purchase price out of the two or three little seal islands and
 the salmon fisheries are now bringing in . over ten million dollars per annum. The . yearly output of gold is close to twenty | millions, and by the end of this year we
 shall have realized more than thirty times, its cost from the minerals alone.
 These are big figures but they are only pin bricks on the surface of that land Of ice and snow. The most of the gold so
 far taken out has been from placers and there are quartz deposits of incalcuable | value. Alaska has copper beds which bid fair to flood the markets of the world and its coal veins are estimated to con- tain billions of tons of black diamonds.
 With Uncle Sam's Prespectors
 During the past week have been look ing over the latest government investiga- tions of this mighty property. As soon as it come into our hands Uncle Sam sent { lis experts to explore it and for the past generation they have been taking it up section by section. climbing the noun tains and tramping over the plains and , plateaus. making maps of the land and prospecting for mineral wealth.
 The greater part of the work has been done by the geological survey, which < keeps three divisions of men in the field. h One of these, including three parties, is X devoted 10 mapping me country ana SlV- Y 1ne It's topography. It is making plans ' from which they can tell all the hills and I holows the height of the mountains and depth of the valleys. Another division is examining the water powers, and a third, and I,should say, the most import ant of all. is composed of dozen differ cnt companies of geologists who are look ]. ing into the minerals and accommodating data as to the coal, iron copper and gold xrIl, frb ba
 | The mineral branch of the survey is 1 TOW under the charge of Dr. Alfred H. 4 Brooks, who has spent more than thir- 1 teen years in the work of exploring 4 Alaska. and who knows more about the { country than any other man in the world. < 1Ic has written geography and geology | of Alaska, and with his scientific assist { arts has spent about five months every year for the past thirteen years in mak- ing explorations with view to the min eral wealth. His parties have gone through the wilds on foot and in boats,