The Alaska daily empire., 1915-04-16
ALASKAN TALKS
 OF KETCHIKAN

CHARLESTON, w. Va, March SO. The Mail says:
 R. S. Eskridge. a consulting mining engineer of Seattle. who is engaged during summer seasons in dredging for gold in Alaska, is at the Kanawha hotel for few days while inyestigat- ing some of the coal measures here.
 Mr. Eslrldge is one of .Alaska's pioneers. having gone over the Dyea trail to the Yukon before there was any White Pass trail or Dawson. He was in the interior and at Dawson until 1900. He then returned to Seat tle and began the practice of law. with sufficient success to retire in 1912 and so back into the mining game and back to his old love, mining en- gineering.
 Mr. Eskridge and J. Fl. Scott were both working on plan to utilize the thousands of tons of heads, ineides and trimmings of salmon thrown away by the salmon canners of Alaska and Puget Sound when they met and join ed forces. the result being the pres ent fish fertilizer and oil producing plant near Ketchikan Alaska. They then took up the possibilities of ob- taining potash from kelp, seaweed which grows in the waters of the Pa. cific and it's bays and inlets. Finding a California concern owned the only kelp harvesting machine. they pur- chased the right to use this machine for Washington. British Columbia and Alaska. Mr. Scott then got busy on the production of potash salts with the result as set forth in this paper last night. a sale of 10000 tons in New York
 "Alr. J. H. Scott said Mir Esk- ridge, "is one of the most remarkable men have ever met. For fourteen months before meeting me he had carried on his investigations into the fish fertilizer and oil business and had mastered it-so thoroughly than in one bound when he was finally introduc- ed In London. he became an aclnowl- edged expert and our plans were sus- pended while some English owners of big plant on the Pacific coast sent M. Scott from London to British Columbia to report on the plant, the business and everything connected with the industry.
 He Knew the Enalish
 'It was not necessary for Mir. Scott to leave London to make that report. He knew every nail in that plant and every item of its business, but he al- so knew the English and realized that they would not value a report unless he went out and made an examination so our plans waited while Scott hiked across the Atlantic and the North American continent and took look.
 Mir Scott is a very wonderful man, He is fiend for work and he never makes a mistake of fact His mind travels too fast for the ordinary mor- tai. but when the latter catches up. he finds he has learned something. l was up in Alaska so the financing of the kelp companies. In each of which l am director, was done solely by Mir. Scotts unaided zeal and was pos. sible only because he knew more about potash. kelp. and how to make kelp yield potash. than probably anyone else in the world. because he knew everything known by all others and had turned his searchlight brain in the channel of original investigation, the result of which he kept to him. self unless he met some expert; when he would generously give him all the new knowledge acquired by himself" ."
 There is no stock for sale so you can believe am sincere in saying that the potash industry will rank with cotton and wheat, both of which depend upon 1t and in a few years J. II. Scott will be known not only for his great wealth. but for his won- derful ability
 Mr. Eskridge will soon leave for San. Francisco to superintend the con- struction of gold dredge for the placer ground operated by his partner and himself in Alaska.
 -o-o--c--
 Miss Lucille Anderson arrived on the Alameda for a visit with her sis ter. Mrs. M. S. Whittier.