Seward daily gateway., 1927-08-12
along it's highway of steel.

in Alaska and in Washington, D. O., including hearings before Congress ional committees through. several years, and the hearings before con- mittees and the debates in the House and Senate of Congress on the Alas ka Railroad Act, approved March 12, 1914, which afford full particulars of my part in these achievements.
 I have been asked more often than all other questions in connection with my Alaskan enterprises how I came to engage in promoting and building a trunk line railroad in the remote wilderness of Alaska, from, through, and to, sections then wholly uninhab- ited by white men, and in establish ing Seward as it's ocean terminus and gateway on a port equally unknown, at a time when unanimous public opinion was combined with financial and political influences of National scope i'll favor of the route from Valdez, or later from Cordova, to the Interior mining districts The con- panion question usually came with it, how and where I found the courage to wage a lone handed struggle through a long stretch of years against odds so formidable.
 Those questions can best be answer ed by the orderly unfolding of events themselves as they will appear in the course of this narrative. But l can say incidently and truly, and with propriety, that the explanation is to be found in part at least in the rest less and ambitious spirit of the Vik- ings, or Norsemen, or Normans All of my ancestors in every branch for 950 years have been of that race. Furthermore, I was not daunted by the opposing opinions of overwhelm- ing numbers. remembered that history is filled with instances where the overwhelming majority later re- versed itself to conform to facts prov en and established by a small minor ity.
 There were a number of unusual coincidences that naturally and by related circumstances drew me into the undertaking, and, once in it, kept me at it until it was finished.
 It happened that just at the time when my youthful ambition was reaching out to do something big, after I had advanced by successive steps from farm boy to school teach CT, to county official, to newspaper worker in all positions up to manag- ing editor on a city daily, to Cover nor's Secretary and to Adjutant Gen. eral of the State of Washington with the rank of Brigadier General, all be- fore I was % years of age, and had returned from service in the Philip pines during the Spanish-Amercan War as a company officer in the First Washington Infantry, the dis covery of gold in the Klondike had set the United States and the world in a fever of mining excitement.
 The dramatic and world wide in- terest in that discovery, the diff entities of travel to it, and the Obsta- cles encountered by Americans on the trip through Canadian territory to the Klondike, commingled to give origin and growth to a demand for an "all American route to the Klondike, , by wagon road or railroad from some port on the Southern coast of Alaska to the new Eldorado. The newspa- pers of the Pacific States and the Nation opened their columns freely and unitedly in urging it upon the Government, month after month for several years incessantly.
 This mining excitement and it's ac- companying demands supplied the in- spiration and presented the opportun- ity that enlisted my budding and rather large ambitions in a work that exactly filled tn escope of my visions.
 But the locations chose for my railroad project and for it's terminus on the coast of Alaska, after a year aa a la1f of oarof,1l inuoctiuatinn