The Cordova daily times., 1916-02-16
PUTS UNI: OVER ON
 SECY. LANE

In the New York World, some time back there appeared an interview with w F. Thompson. of Fairbanks, that is typical of the well known newspaperman. Mir. Thompson was ! in the mood when he gave this in terview to the reporter Outside, and the reporter got the mood just right It is worth reprinting for that reason. The story follows:
 "We have a dinky little narrow guage railroad there. financially in bankruptcy in a thousand ways. in efficiently equipped, and therefore run at an enormous extravaganza: cant pay the interest on it's bonds, and is therefore getting worse all the time. Somebody made the supreme court conclude that the railways in Alaska came under the Interstate Commerce Commission. and the clerks of the commission began to hand out orders by mail
 Every railroad in Alaska had to quit except the Guggenheim road, the White Pass X Yukon and our little forty-five mile road. Our road could not quit. so long as they kept run ming they were on earth and had a Ichance-when they quit they were dead.
 Finally, after the Interstate Com merce Commission had piled up about i$10O,O00 fine and 263 years in jail for the president, the manager -- very good carpenter, by the way - came crying to me. asking what he should do. It was so funny I told him to forget it and leave it to me.
 Three weeks later Franklin K. Lane, president of the Interstate Commerce Commission, received a let ter from me. which read:
 "Dear Frank: When you and I used to work together on the old Ia coma News, a generation and more ago, you used to be a good fellow, but today you are not, and if you don't change your system something bad is apt to happen to you. For in- stance, you threaten to put our little line of railroad out of business unless lit hauls dynamite in ten car lengths from the engine In the first place, | the blamed railroad hasn't got ten cars, and in the second place 1t hasn't an engine that could haul ten cars if 1 it had them. The only way they can comply with your demands is to hitch car of dynamite onto the engine with ten car lengths rope. Do you care to be responsible for what happens to the engine and crew thereof when the train starts down hill?'
 'T continued in the letter with the actual story of the construction of the road, and three weeks later both the railroad and myself received letters from Lane, assuring us that the In terstate Commerce Commission would make no more trouble with the road and they have kept their word
 "For six months afterward. after Lane became secretary of the inter- 1 for, I kept getting letters from diff ferent members of the Interstate Com merce Commission explaining why they had mixed 1t with our railroad. and apologizing.
 Three months ago the commission formally remitted the immense fines against President Joslin, told him he needn't go to jail for more than 300 wears, to which punishment he fell heir under the interstate rules-Con- gress has passed a new law remitting the tax of $1O0 a mile on all Alaska railways for all time to come - just because Lane and I used to work to- gether more than twenty years ago on a little hand-set daily paper in the Istate of Washington, and because he lis human man when you can get