The ALASKA
SOV'R'DOVGH
Vol I, No, 7
Douglas, Alaska, Tuesday, October 17, 1911
10c a Copy
THE SILENCE OF GIFFORD PINCHOT
Smiling, shaking hands, but refus
ing to speak even in a whisper about the
mission which brought him to Alaska,
Gifford Pinchot, ex-forester, spent a day
in Juneau last week.
It was Senator LaFollette, Pinchot’s
candidate for president of the United
States, who sprang the “Controller
Bay Scandal,” which has since explod
ed with a bad smell, in a resolution
calling the administration to task—the
fist gun in the senator’s big campaign
for the nomination to succeed Taft. It
was a big thing, that scandal, as it
looked at the time. At close range, as
the Insurgency looked it over, it bore
every evidence of being in the embryo,
the keynote of the campaign of 1912.
Pinchot and Poindexter, Pregnant with
pursuit, promoters of the progressive
push, piped the point.
There was but one exit to the coal
fields, and the Guggenheims, in the per
son of Thomas Ryan, was in the very
act of gobbling it—rather, the presi
dent was in the very act of handing it
over to him. Twelve thousand acres of
magnificent forest were released from
the Chugak reserve at the behest of
Ryan, after the president’s brother had
“put the president wise” to the fact
that Ryan was “in right” with the
Guggenheims, in order that Ryan, to
have and to hold for his masters, the
Guggenheims, might seize a waterfront
—the wonderful waterfront of Control
ler Bay, that ideal ship’s haven in the
far north.
Probably if that rollieky financial fil
ibuster, that comic opera promoter whom
ueorge Ade should long since nave put
to better use, had been half as well
known in Washington as he was in
Nome, the thing would not have hap
pened. It was a mighty big stock sell
ing proposition, back in New York,
where a sucker is born every minute,
and w’here they never heard of Tom
Ryan’s ice palace at Nome.
But whatever Ryan’s plans were, it
has been very thoroughly demonstrated
that the Ryan plan was neither a mon
opoly, nor a‘ feasible engineering plan.
To the westward of Alaska they have
always known that Controller Bay
would never be any good as a harbor,
and that the 12,000 acres released from
the reserve by the president wTas a bar
ren waste of sand, without a tree on
it. But “Back East” you can, of
course, tell most anything and make it
stick about Alaska. LaFollette has been
told the scandal side about the Control
ler Bay grab, believed it, and explod
ed a bomb in the United States Senate
when he demanded an investigation.
The lirst man who told the trutt
about the Tom Ryan proposition was
Tom Lew'is, special examiner, and his
report written in Juneau, was the ba
sis of the president’s almost angry, bu1
convincing message. Then Secretary
Fisher, chosen from the ranks of th<
Pinchot conservationists to be secretary
of the interior, together with the news
paper correspondents wTho went wit!
him, some of whom were of the oppo
sition, forever put the quietus on tin
Controller Bay scandal.
Not that the admirers of LaFollette
discouraged inougu tuey were vy me
explosion of the bubble, were altogeth
er without hope. Pinchot and Poindex
ter came to Alaska to give new life to
the issue which had promised so' much
—Pinchot to look after the facts, Poin
dexter to look after the politics, and
Lathrop the press. Pinchot was the
best man, by long odds, of the three,
but what he found was undoubtedly dis
cou raging.
“I wanted to ask you,” said a rep
resentative of the Sourdough to Pin
chot,'after the formalities of an intro
duction were over, “If you think thal
the Ryan proposition is an attempt a1
monopoly and a grab!”
Sad, but sweet as wild honey, was th<
smile of Gilford Pinchot. “I can't an
swer that question,” he said. “I hav<
determined not to discuss the mattei
which brought me here until I get bad
to the United States.”
“I suppose then,” hopelessly persist
ed the interviewer, “if I should asl
you if you found that the Guggenheim:
had another and more feasible line plan
ned, partly surveyed, which rai
i from the coal fields into Cordova, th<
question would meet with the sam
, fate?”
“The answer to that question wouli
' be a first cousin to the last,” he an
swered, kindly, sweetly and sadly.
“And I eould expect nothing bette
1 if I asked pou if you still thought th
coal fields you visited were as wondei
' ful as Collier’s and Hampton’s painte
them?”
, “Again T must refuse to answer,’
Hell Li mi. JL iUV/l
“And I could hope for nothing bet
ter, if I ask if there were any trees on
that portion of the forest reserve re
leased by the president following Ry
an ’s application. ’ ’
‘ ‘ I am sorry, very sorry, ’ ’ he answer
ed, “but I could not answer that eith
er.” There was a short, sad, even al
most painful pause, and then he asked
softly, “You understand my position,
don’t yout”
“I confess I don’t,” said the inter
viewer, “not quite clearly.”
Gifford Pinchot is full to the brim
■ of the milk of human kindness. “Doin’
thing for folks” out of the kindness of
1 his heart, has been a life work with
him. He paused and sadly scanned the
‘ outline of Mount Juneau.
“You see,” he said, after a moment,
; “I have not completed my investiga
tions yet. And after I have I must go
• back and talk it over with my assoai
: ates. ”
i “Well,” said the interviewer, “per
- haps this won’t interfere with your res
1 olution then—have you seen any timber
; in Alaska that you thought was worth
; conserving!”
“Indeed I have,” said the ex-forest
l er with ready enthusiasm this time. “I
saw on Kenai peninsula a tree that
measured four feet through at the butt
r and for .125 feet was merchantable tira
3 ber, and there is a lot of timber like
that in this same Chugak reserve.”
j For all his visit to Alaska was a
failure in the light of its particular pur
(Continued to Page Fve)
GLACIERS ARE STILL BEING DISCOVERED IN ALASKA. THIS ONE WAS RECENTLY FOUND ON THE STICKINE RIVER.