The Nenana daily news., 1919-04-25

these two items and the cost of their rehabilitation as shown in your
 estimate for 1919, H. Doc. 5SS, 65th Congress, 2nd Session, pages 751-2,
 $32,24S,612, representing the total cost of main line constructed by you, or 228 main line miles at a cost of S141. Al per mile. The es- inmates made by both the Taft rail- road commission of 1913, and your Alaskan Engineering commission, have averaged about S50,000 per main line mile, and it is a surprise to find that the actual cost has thus jumped about 200 per cent above the estimates, to more than S140.000 per main line mile.
 3.-Projeet Left Disjointed and
 Wrecked
 From mile 225 at Talkeetna, there is an unconstructed gap of 14S miles, to mile 373 on the Nenana river; there is also an unconstructed gap in the narrow gauge line be- tween Nenana and Fairbanks; no provision or estimate has been made for a bridge across the Panama river which makes the gap doubly diff cult, for no coal may reach the Fairbanks mining camps until fur the.' action by Congress. The pro- ject is thus left in a disiointed, de- moralized and wrecked condition. with the various parts of construct ed road north of Matanuska Junction entirely useless, until. in some fu- ture time, they can be united and into one complete through line. Immediate loss and deprecia- ton and immoderate expense for protection and watchmen must fol- low the cessation of construction while waiting for future legislation and appropriations. No part of this disiointed main line north of Ma tanuska Junction, more than one half the whole line mileage, is cap able of performing useful service in this dismembered condition. Cn- less Congress shall make immediate provision for closing these gaps and the main line to Fair banks, the whole project except the Matanuska branch is a waste. The relief from excessive rates on the Yukon and Panama rivers so long expected by the mining, mercan- tile and home-making interests of thees river regions will be post poned indefinitely, and the White Pass and Yukon route steamboat on the rivers will have gained all it fought for before the Senate committee on territories in 1914, because of the abandonment of the uncompleted through line. 4.-Bureaucratic Railroad Construc-
 In the light of experience it is plain that 1t was a mistake to at temp to build this railroad through a new bureau organized in the in- terior department. The Act au- the construction provided a we'll devised plan for doing it by con- tract. But you declined to ask for bids, to let a contract for constructing the whole job, or any large part of it, and formed the elaborate bureau called the Alaskan commlSslon n the ln- terior department, and began its construction by day wages.
 On pages 763-5 of the book of estimates, 1920, that organization is spread out for official inspection, headed by three commissioners, each drawing s10,000 year salary, a greater sum than either of them ever before receivld. There they are, commissioners, managers, SUD- erintendents, editors, disbursing of fcers, etc, 726 of them, all drawing high annual salaries, winter and summer, whether they work or not. for building a pioneer railroad line