The Birmingham age-herald., 1920-06-23

, a railroad. difficult as that construction was, so that a part of the copper region IS speedily to be tapped, if this has not | ilready been done.
 Senator Jones to the day of his death was persuaded that the time will come
 when the mother lode of gold will be dis covered somewhere in Alaska. From
 that source, he used to say, flowed the streams and rivalets of gold which pene- trated British North America and our own mountains of the far west. Maurice L. Muhlman, who was the government
 ablest authority on gold, doubted the ex-
 istence of such a thing as a mother lode.
 but he as long as he lived was convinced that with adequate transportation facili-
 ties. roads, railroads and trails the Alaska gold field would in time be so highly de- veloped as to stand second possibly to
 the gold production in South Africa.
 The government, however and Con
 gress as well, always seemed a little shy
 when the possibilities of Alaska were re- ferred to. This may have been due to the dread. that if private capital were en- couraged it would be able to take pos session of the richest of the Alaska re- sources and establish monopolies. What ever the reason was appeals made to Con- gress and to the government for legisla- ton and governmental assistance for the development of Alaskan resources were little needed until recently. Now, it is reported that the department of the in- terior will immediately undertake to put into effect a cooperation of federal con- trol of Alaska lands and resources with the consolidation of the two American shipping lines operating between the Ps- cific ports and the Atlantic coast. The Secretary of the Interior, when accept ing the report of the commission which was appointed by him, is reported to have said that Alaskas enormous resources have never been properly developed, He might have added that many of these re- sources have been left untouched. He did say, according to reports received from Washington, that the very rich mnlng the peninsula have never been made available. Under government control and supervision with wise governmental reg ulation a great improvement in shipping facilities will speedily be undertaken. The secretary believes that when this is done there will be no difficulty about secur- ing investment capital, in amount suffi- cient to develop all of Alaskan resources. Nothing is said about the possibility, even probability, that Alaska may come to the rescue, so to speak, of the petrol cum industry of the United States II it be true that we are exhausting our own supplies of petroleum It is known that
 some of the leaders of the oil industry have received information from Alaska which justifies the hope that there may be a great development of petroleum pro- duction in Alaska because all the indi- cations point to great reserves or oil beneath the soil in some parts of the peninsula. Probably the new Congress which will be chosen in the fall of this year will be asked to supplement the un- dertakings in the parts of the interior of Alaska which have in view the speedy and high development of the territory re- sources. When these are developed the peninsula will be found if the experts are correct, to be one of the richest areas yielding the largest returns to be found
 in any area of like size in the world