Seward daily gateway., 1927-08-12


 ren Copper River valley to Eagle on
 the Yukon, 40 miles below the Klon-
 dike.
 i Disregarding the doubteIs, I was I possessed with such abundance of l faith in the merits and in the sound
 ness and logic of the plans I had
 carefully matured that I succeeded
 in persuading influential men of sub stantial worth, first a widening cir
 cle in business life and later others in
 high officials stations in Washington,
 D. C., to see the project from my point of view, and to back it to a successful end I put my faith in large and varied and permanent re- sources in Alaska, rather than in the temporary and fleeting placer gold of one small camp in Canada, as the foundation on which to build a rail-
 road for all the future.
 Until the failure of the Sovereign
 Bank of Canada in the panic of 1907 the worst in the banking experience of Canada and the United States, the Alaska Central was making rapid and uninterrupted headway, and appeared to have a clear field to the Tanana valley. Including the building that had been done under my ownership c+p
 and control of the Alaska Central and the work accomplished under the ow- counting advance construction beyond the end of the rails, there was in 1908 the equivalent of 100 miles of com pleted railroad from Seward north, as estimated by it's chief engineer, and ment engineers.
 The Sovereign Bank had furnished
 Frost and Osborne the money to buy my interests in and to carry on the :; construction of the Alaska Central railroad. It's failure therefore involved them and their Alaska Central in fi- nancial disaster.
 The receivers of the Sovereign Bank, who came into control of the
 Alaska Central, represented other banks in Canada They were unable even if they had been willing to raise money to complete the Alaska Central
 It consequently fell to me again in this emergency to take measures to revive it and extend it along my ori- ginal plans. I soon encountered the open opposition of the New York ow- ners of the Copper River & Northwest
 ern railroad, who notified me that they would not allow the Alaska Gen. tral to be extended to the Tanana val ley. Since those owners were the leading and most influential bankers in New York and in North America, the Government of the United States was strong enough to meet their chal- lenge and to build it further in the face of their opposition. I according ly in 1911 buckled my armor in a cam paign to induce the Government to build a system of railroads in Alaska, which should be independent of any
 ,o;IrooJ
 In the critical period from May ?, 1913, when Official Hearings were be- gun before Congressional Committees
 on two radically different Alaska Rail
 road bills, to April 10, 1915, when Pres ident Wilson officially designated the l location of the Alaska Railroad from 1 Seward through the Susitna valley, 1 following the survey and route of the
 Alaska Central, under authority of the Alaska Railroad Act, I was pitted a. lone against that powerful group of New York bankers, who had ramifica- | tions in every State of the Union. They contested every foot of the ground during every day of those two years through organized Hobbies and 1 through newspapers they controlled l in striving for legislation and for ac- tion that would locate and build Government railroad by way of the