The Nenana daily news., 1918-11-04

anything on the campaign issues he
 should say a few words about him self by way of introduction. He
 was, he said, the close personal friend of Secretary of the Interior
 Fanklin K. Lane, and with whom he had been closely associated and
 in close personal touch for the past
 35 years. He was city editor of
 the Tacoma Daily News at the time
 Secretary Lane owned that paper, very many years ago, and had all ways enjoyed the confidence and friendship of Mr. Lane He is un- doubtedly the greatest friend Alaska
 has today, and Mr. Ryan said that he had personal knowledge of the
 secretary's ideas and intentions re- garding the proposed measures for the betterment of conditions in this great northland and for the full de- velopment of its great natural re- sources by means of transportation facilities and other lines of communi-
 cation.
 Regarding the Alaska Railroad bill, which Wickersham has laid claim on several occasions to being the author of, MT. Ryan stated in
 the most positive terms that he per sona1ly knew that the bill was drawn
 up by Secretary Lane and intro duced in the Senate by Senator Chamberlain and that Wickersham had requested the privilege of intro-
 ducing a copy of this same bill in
 the House of Representatives at the same time it was introduced in the Senate. That was all the connec- tion Wickersham ever had with the
 bill, in spite of the claims he had
 made of it's authorship. In the course of his campaign speeches in
 the Interior towns, Wickersham, he said, read passages from the Con- gressional Record on the hearings
 on the Railroad bill, but he had conveniently forgotten to read his opening statement, which is as fol- lows: "I am unalterably opposed to United States government operation of railroads and coal mines;" and in statements made later in the course , of his speeches at Fairbanks and elsewhere, Wickersham said that he was in favor of the road being leas- ed to private enterprise after its i completion. Wickersham also per sonally told MT. Ryan that he was Tn favor of such policy.
 MT. Ryan told his audience that he had known Wickersham for as long as he had known Secretary Lane, and that during all this time he has known him to be aggressive and contentious and that he was eternally quarreling, and that meas lures for the betterment and da- velopment of Alaska were. in conse- quence, retarded and defeated The 
 railroad which the government is
 building in Interior Alaska was po- Ing to be the means of doing the greatest amount of good for Alaska as everybody could plainly see, and
 It was up to Alaskans to see to it i that the hands of those responsible TOT securing the necessary appropri- ations for continuance of the great beneficial work, be strengthened and i the object fostered in every possible way until completed This could
 only be done by sending a man to
 Congress who had the confidence anu support or the President and
 the cabinet officials, as MT. Sulzer
 had and, he said, it would be noth-
 ing short of a calamity to send a man of Wickersham's known antag
 onistic views and actions, who, by
 his obstructive tactics wo d throw
 cloud and hamper the passage of
 the necessary appropriations for the
 continuance of the work.
 MT. Wickersham, he said, possessed
 a strong personality and had the
 ability to dictate erroneous impress
 sions in the minds of his hearers
 and to convey false impressions: he