The Brookings register. [volume] (Brookings, Brookings County, S.D.) 1903-1971, 1914-03-19
AMERICAN MAGAZINE SUGGESTS
BIG NEW JOB FOR COCKTAILS
OF PANAMA

In the March American Magazine
the editors publish a double-leaded
%broadside editorial in which they sug-
gest that Cocktails, now that he has
nearly finished the Panama Canal, be
sent to Alaska with his men for the
purpose of developing the u of
that great territory. The need for the
development of Alaska's %untapped
riches was recently laid down by Sec.
rotary Lane of the Interior Depart
ment in his report to President Will
soma public work greater by far than
the construction of the Panama Canal
Following is what the American Maya
zine suggests:
ut is a bold proposition, calculated
to take hold upon the imagination OF
the American people. He asks nothing
less than the development as a public
work of the vast territory of Alaska
the building Of roads and railroads,
the opening of mines, the founding of
agriculture.
Here is a territory one-fifth the
size of the United States with less
than forty thousand white inhabitants,
less than one thousand miles of roads
and only fragments of railroads. Part
of the territory has as kindly a climate
as Stockholm or st. Petersburg and
there are $4,000, 900 acres that will
make homes for a people as sturdy as
those of New England. 1t will not
only support a large agricultural popu-
lation but it has mineral wealth of
untold value, great forests awaiting
the lumberman, and rich fisheries.
"The people of the United States
have already declared positively that
this virgin territory shall not be waste
fully and greedily exploited by the
private monopolist.
1--WE abruptly closed opportunities
to the monopolist,' says Secretary
Lane, but did not open them to the
developer
HE now asks immediate action. He
asks that adequate governmental ma
chinery be devised to do the work. He
suggests a board of commissioners to
assume complete charge of all the af-
fairs of the territory, with power to
develop it's resources on the broadcast
scale.
Five years ago this scheme would
have seemed Utopian in the extreme.
There has been a tradition in America,
long sedulously fostered, that govern
ment work is of necessity wasteful, in
efficient, scandalously slow. And I'M
der the old system of spoils-politics
there was no little justification for
this view.
But the Panama Canal has been
constructed. We went into that enter
prise like an inexperienced boy, un-
aware OF our own strength; we are
coming out of it with a new under.
standing of the meaning of public
YIN ohu a hCW SOuuuCuCC III Jul
ability as a nation to engage in it.
The canal will not only be finished
nearly a year before 1t was promised
and save from eight million to ten mil
lion dollars of its estimated cost, but it
will set a unique standard of economy,
efficiency, honesty, humanitarianism.
We have discovered hitherto unknown
human In the form of state
minded leadership-Goethals Gorgas,
Sibert. Gaillard, Hodges, Rousseau, are
examples-out of which has been de.
veloped a superb machine for public
service.
This year the veterans of Panama,
having o a victory in a new kind
of warfare, will be prepared for new
conQuests. Why not maintain this
superb machine as a national asset?
Why not urn the power that has con-
Quered Panama to the conquest of
Alaska? Why not give Goethals and
his men command of this new work
for the people?
I'VE must not stop with a single
shining object lesson: for the only