The Daily Alaska empire., 1929-08-24
WHY AND HOW THE FEDERAL GOVERNMENT CAME TO PUR-
 CHASE BLOCK 19 FOR THE PUR- POSE OF PLACING THE CAPT. FOL BUILDING AT NEAU.

JUNEAU, Aug. 22.-(To the Edi- tor)-During the year of 1908 the election for the third Delegate to Congress came on. I was selected as manager for The First Judicial Division" Dan Sutherland for the Nome Division, Dan Driscoll for the Fairbanks Division and Dr. F. M. Boyle for the Valdez Division. We were to manage the campaign for James Wickersham. All these Divisions had a large population and cast a heavy vote at this time. Fairbanks casting the largest of any of them and Nome next to the largest.
 l The campaign was conducted in a most vigorous manner all through the Territory. There were num- Der of candidates and I had as my opposition managers lot of such men as Gov. Hoggatt, Judge Lyons, Big Clem Summers, President of The First National Bank, Judge John R. Vim, L. R. Gillett, ator- ney at law, L. P. Shackleford, The Great" and, last, Gloomy Gus with his daily paper, known as The Mining Record They were the managers for the Seattle law yer, J. w. Corson, and with them it was anything to defeat Wicker sham. They stopped at nothing. Finally they hit onto bright scheme, and one evening Gloomy Gus" came out with a purported telegram to the effect that Judge Wickersham had announced on the street at Valdez that he would re- move the Capitol to Valdez in case he was elected. It was good cam paign stuff, and I saw my support giving way and ebbing like the tides. What was I to do? Wicker sham was at Nome and the tele-' graph wires were down and no way 1 in which I could get declaration l lIOIl llllil. OO SeiiiiC eO IAiC OOh- clusion that since my opponents had published telegrams which they never received that I would take the hint and write a telegram to myself and sign Wickersham name to it. I accordingly did so, the message reading as follows:
 Nome, Alaska, Oct. 26, 1908 "E. Valentine, Juneau, Alaska.
 q never have ana never shall advocate Capitol removable, con- trary statements are nothing but i political lies. If elected I shall at once ask for a large appropria- tion for the construction of a Capitol at Juneau. n | (Signed) James WickerSham."
 I had two thousand copies of this telegram printed in secret and had them distributed at Douglas, Treadwell and Juneau. I didn't put them out until o'clock on Monday evening, too late for the opposition to contradict. It was truly remarkable the way the tide turned, and the next day we went i to the polls and carried Gastineau Channel by an almost unanimous vote for Wickersham. It was enough to put him over. He lost the other, three divisions, and he wired me from Fort Yukon that he had just heard of my famous telegram and that he was elected" My greatest reward came three days later when Gloomy Gus" came out in his paper with an awful vail, declar- ing that his party had been out maneuvered, outgeneraled, etc. and that, that Valetine had sent out emissaries in the dead of night to publish false telegrams, and that they would give me thousand dollars reward if I would place the original telegram in my window where the people could see and read it. Since had already issued two thousand copies of it, couldn't feel that it would be right to take their money and especially since they were all broke after spending so much on the campaign. I took the greatest pleasure in hearing them vail after losing the election Wickersham arrived at Juneau about the first of next February and of course the town had to give him a great reception at the Elks' Hall. During his address that ev- ening he mentioned my famous telegram and declared it was his telegram and he reiterated it and that he would do his best to keep and carry out any promise which had made to the people of Cas- tincau Channel He went on to Washington and assumed the du- ties of his office The first thing he did was to introduce a bill in the House asking for two hundred and fifty thousand dollars for the erection of Capitol at Juneau. And the bill included a clause de- claring that Juneau should be the Capitol of Alaska for all time.' This bill was passed by Congress and became law, hence any talk of removing the capitol is useless.
 Then the block or site for the building was purchased. Mrs. Ku-