The Alaska daily empire., 1916-11-06
wILEuLL REFRIGERATION
Seward Gatewav)

Seward Gateway
 It often happens that a who has not spent much time in Alaska or who has not been in more than one or two parts of Alaska is unable tO ap- precate what has been done all over the Territory For instance. arrivals in the Territory cannot possibly what has been done in the matter of road building It must be said that there is little excuse for the manner in which Delegate Wickersham spoke about road building in his speech at Seward Whether it had been prepared for or not cannot be said, but in to his question from the platform men in the audience said something about six miles of roads here and miles of road there and so on giving tbe impression that the work done was very little MT WicNersham also said that the pay ment of poll brought the funds available to the Road Commission from three and half millions to ilVe miIlons. lt IS pity that a Delegate to Con gress would give such an example of eXaggeration as this. It is safe to say. perhaps. that all the poll taxes collected in Alaska did not amount to a tenth part Of that
 But with regard to the road building: It might educate some of those new arrivals to tell them that the Territory and in many instances to places where road building exceedingly difficult The employ ees Of the road commission in many places are the pioneers ana their base or supplies are often very far away, so that the expenses of building are very great. But in spite of the many drawbacks splendid systems of roads exist in different camps. Of course these people have never seen the fine roads uaversng the Tanana valley. They do not know the difficulties besettng the work in building high ways over the tundras of the Nome Division
 Ruby has recently gone record thanking the Commission for the fine road to Long Creek, road which itself is about 40 miles in length
 Leaving aside altogether the members of the Commission need only mention men like Dan Jones, John Zugg Bob SOmmers and An ton Eide, superintendent of road building in the ous divisions, to show that Alaska has been lucky in the men who build its trails. The other day bridge was built on Cache Creek and this reminds one that one bridge alone Nome over Nome river cost twenty thousand dollars and had to cost that much to be any good.
 And there are such bridges and roads in every camp from Ketchikan to Gold Run Even in Circle City you can travel on roads built by the Commis. sion Faraway Idtarod has its roads to the creeks. Even Toloyana has a road from Fairbanks
 Oh heavens, any man who knows anything about Alaska and its camps knows what the Road Commis- sion has done. He could talk and write for hours about the work and the roads that have been built One who just took ship to Seward and never got any farther does not know and such man when he speaks only blows in blssful ignorance of his ignorance. The Gateway is simply saying all this because it considers it it's duty ten the truths which 1t has learned by many years of experience in different parts of the Territory
 There is no defense of the Commission needed It is merely matter of justice and we hope that this will be the last time it will have to allude to the subject.