The Alaska citizen., 1911-09-04


able time, the government should issue him his pa.
tent People applied purchase lands in every
known coal field in Alaska. Some the claims
Of the applicants adjoined each other; others
hundreds of miles apart
Now. nobody could open a coal mine on one
hundred and sixty of land could any sin
gle person buy more than that acreage 1t. there
fore, resulted that when number of mems claims
adjoined they naturally looked forward the
time when their titles should be granted and
they should be ready to open mine and build
railroad to it, that they would work their claims
together.
If had conspired to get say
ten claims. and had taken for himself,
and had hired nine other to enter nine ether
claims. and furnished them the money to pay
for them. with agreement that when the title
was perfected the nine would transfer their claims
to the one. this would have been illegal. The man
would have been attempting get claims in
stead Of claim But nobody did this. Though
several years have passed. and the government has
spent thousands upon thousands of dollars for de
tectve Investigations, not single instance has
been shown where this done
Probably of the claimants expected to
work their claims in conjunction with their neigh
bors after title granted Possibly other claim
ants looked forward selling their claims at a
profit sometime in the future when railroads had
been built and the ground made accessible.
But this unlawful. 1t entirely worthy
and proper. In fact. the hope OF making profit from
the claims was the incentive behind every single
one of the entries, whether that hope was ever
be realized or not.
Something over thousand applied pur-
chase claims in this way. A large number them
in due course surveyed their claims More than two
hundred carried their entries far that they filed
tI,,sr
The government took the money and gave them
receipts for it in an aggregate amount of more than
three hundred and twenty thousand dollars Their
patents should have been issued in due course
This money is in the treasury of the United
States, and has been, large part OF it, for several
years, but not a single man has been able to get
his patent title to the pround.
Furthermore they have been able to get the
officials whose duty il is say that they will
will not give them their patents. On the contrary,
the government has sent detectives and secret ser
vice agents into Alaska. into various states and
cities all this country, and Europe,
where some of the applicants purchase coal
lands have gone their travels seeking evidence
upon which ndict them Men in this city that
all know to be as honorable and upright
there anywhere, men who believed that when
they spending their money in Alaska they
were doing a useful and important service in help
ing to develop and establish much needed indus
try in a country, find themselves under
Indictment and pursued relentlessly by the gov
eminent for trying to purchase coal lands at the
price the government itself named
In the kondke, in 1897, there was shortage
or provisions, and most of upon short ra-
tons. Such a luxury as butter was almost un-
known. Late in the winter of that year someone
told me that the North American TRANSPORTATION
& Trading company, of which Captain John J.
Healy was manager, had few barrels of canned
butter which they had been saving for time when
the need of the people might be greatest and that
now as winter was nearing its end they proposed
to open their stores of butter and begin selling it
the next day. 1t to be sold at five dollars a
can. AS my partner and | had had no butter for
months, was promptly hand with my sack of
gold dust to buy some l hoped to get five cans
| knew Captain Heay and had been friendly with
him, and hoped that my acquaintance with him
would help me and that would be crowded
out of the line. went up to Captain Healy in the
store and said: Captain, I understand you are
CSA1lt I,tDr