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FEB 4 1910

M OF D.

JK9525 1910

0126530

GOVERNMENT OF ALASKA.

THURSDAY, JANUARY 20, 1910.

The committee met at 10.30 a. m. Present: Senators Beveridge (chairman), Dillingham, Nelson, Burnham, Kean, Dick, Piles, Clarke, of Arkansas, Frazier, Owen, and Hughes.

Hon. James Wickersham, Delegate in Congress from Alaska, appeared.

STATEMENT OF HON. JAMES WICKERSHAM.

Mr. WICKERSHAM. Gentlemen of the committee, the inquiry at this time is in reference to Senate bill 5436, introduced by Senator Beveridge, which is said to represent the wishes of the President in respect to a form of government to be given to the Territory of Alaska.

One of the Senators this morning has suggested that we have a very small population in that country, scattered over a very large area. I wish to say to the committee that in my judgment we have about 50,000 white people in the Territory of Alaska, and the census gives us 35,000 Indians. So, there are more than 75,000 people in the Territory.

It is true it is a large country, and it is also true that those people have been living in that country now very largely for forty-three years. The towns of Sitka, Juneau, Ketchikan, Fairbanks, Nome, and a dozen other towns of that kind are well settled, well established, well built, and filled with churches and schools, with electric lights and everything which goes with civilization.

As I stated to the committee yesterday, we have in the Territory of Alaska the immense Tanana Valley, an area of country larger than many States of the Union, of the finest possible agricultural land, in which men are now settling, and in a short time there will be a large farming population there. We raise fine crops, and as soon as we get communication with the outside world so that our products can be carried out, we will not only be able to produce everything that now goes into Alaska, but will even have everything to supply people outside on the coast.

So, it is a mistake when gentlemen think that Alaska is a barren country. It is a magnificent agricultural country. It is a magnificent country in its great natural resources. We have more coal, as I said to you yesterday, than Pennsylvania, Ohio, and West Virginia; we have more copper than Montana and Arizona; we have more gold than California and Colorado; and we have more fish

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than all the balance of the world put together. We have unlimited

resources.

Senator CLARKE, of Arkansas. Those things can be said very glibly. What evidence have you to prove it?

Mr. WICKERSHAM. The evidence of the United States Geological Survey, and information most accurate and systematic as to the agricultural resources. I have myself lived in that Territory for ten years. I have seen the crops growing, and I have raised them myself and know all about it.

Senator DICK. What are you raising there?

Mr. WICKERSHAM. All kinds of vegetables. Potatoes, cabbages, turnips, rutabagas, celery, and everything of that kind grow in the gardens. We raise oats and winter wheat. The agricultural capacity of the country seems to be surprisingly unlimited.

Senator CLARKE, of Arkansas. Those grow for a few months in the year?

Mr. WICKERSHAM. Yes, sir; and in that season of the year we have all daylight, so we have two hours for growing to almost your one in this portion of the country. The season is doubled in its length. Senator DICK. Have you any opportunity there for grazing?

Mr. WICKERSHAM. Yes; there is an immense opportunity there for grazing. I have some letters, which I regret I have not here this moment, from people who are engaged in that particular class of business and from some of the farmers.

Senator DILLINGHAM. I suggest that in order that we may not detain the Judge, who is limited in time, we allow him to put all public reports in the record in support of his statement, and they will be printed.

The CHAIRMAN. They were introduced yesterday afternoon.

Senator CLARKE, of Arkansas. Reports of the weather bureau and things of that kind?

Mr. WICKERSHAM. I do not want to put in anything except what is absolutely fair and true. I have been elected to represent the people of Alaska. I know what the situation is up there, and I want to represent them fairly. I want to disclose to the committee honestly what the situation is up there. There is no difficulty in doing it from the records.

The CHAIRMAN. Very well.

(The matter submitted by Mr. Wickersham is as follows:)

[Telegram to President Taft signed by eleven daily and five weekly newspapers, the mayors of all incorporated towns, and the chief executive officers of commercial bodies in the Territory of Alaska.]

WILLIAM H. TAFT,

FAIRBANKS, ALASKA, September 25, 1909.

President of the United States, Seattle, Wash.

A united press and people of Alaska, in aid of constructive legislation for the creation of a government by the people in this Territory and in aid of the development of its natural resources, respectfully request you to recommend in your next message to Congress and give your support to the creation of an elective Alaskan legislature in substantial conformity to Delegate Wickersham's bill introduced at the recent special session of Congress.

Newspapers: Fairbanks Daily News Miner; Fairbanks Daily Times; Daily Nome Gold Digger, Nome; Nome Daily Nugget, Nome; Skagway Alaskan, Skagway; Daily Miner, Ketchikan; Daily Alaska Dispatch, Juneau; Pioneer Press, Haines; Seward Gateway, Seward; Hot Springs Echo, Hot Springs; Tanana Leader, Fort Gibbon; Valdez Prospector, Valdez; Cordova North Star,

Cordova; Tanana Miner, Chena; Daily Tanana Tribune, Fairbanks; Douglas Island News, Douglas.

Mayors: E. Valentine, mayor, Juneau; W. B. Watts, mayor, Nome; L. Tonseth, mayor, Chena; L. Archibald, mayor, Valdez; C. Ott, mayor, Eagle; H. Ashley, mayor, Skagway; Joseph H. Smith, mayor, Fairbanks.

E. O. Smith, president Sitka Chamber of Commerce; F. G. Hale, president Seward Chamber of Commerce.

[Editorial from the Seward (Alaska) Daily Gateway, December 11, 1909.]

NO COMMISSION WANTED.

President Taft could hardly have chosen a more direct way in which to call forth the criticism of Alaskans than by his proposal to appoint a commission to govern the Territory. The people of Alaska have suffered much from the lack of proper laws and from unwise legislation that has been enacted by a Congress of the United States, which, in some instances, has been densely ignorant of the needs of the people who are developing the country, and in others grossly indifferent. There is a feeling, however, that they would rather bear the ills they have than to take the chances of greater ones growing out of a government by a commission. A commission has been tried upon the Filipinos, but the intelligent Alaskan very much objects to being classed with those people and being subjected to a paternal, not to say, infernal, kind of government that might possibly have some advantages for the untutored savage.

There may be some plausible reasons why Congress does not want to grant home rule to the people of the Territory in its present state of development, but may the good Lord deliver us from having a commission foisted upon us, which would be likely to be more ignorant of the needs of the Territory or more indifferent to its interests than Congress has shown itself to have been in the past.

[Platforms of various political parties of Alaska in the election of a Delegate to the House of Representatives, August, 1909.]

PLATFORM OF JAMES WICKERSHAM, REPUBLICAN.

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I shall stand for (1) President Roosevelt's recommendation that some form of local self-government should be provided, as simple and inexpensive as possible," for Alaska; (2) for an elective territorial legislature, with carefully limited powers.

PLATFORM OF JOHN CARSON, REPUBLICAN.

Urge home rule.

Second. We believe that Alaska is entitled to all the benefits of the ordinance of 1787, and we demand the extension of that patriotic compact to the management and control of this Territory in order that the people of Alaska may have a voice in their own affairs.

PLATFORM OF THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY.
Home rule.

First. We regard the establishment of a suitable form of government for the Territory of Alaska the question of foremost importance, and to that end we submit the following:

We demand the enactment of some simple and inexpensive form of local selfgovernment for Alaska on lines sufficiently guarding and restricting the number of subdivisions in which the Territory may be subdivided; this to the end that the property rights within the district so provided with an organic law may be, in all respects, perfectly safeguarded and protected to the fullest extent compatible with good government.

We condemn the plank in the Republican platform asking for the extension of the ordinance of 1787 to Alaska for the reason that the form of governinent

provided for in that ordinance is wholly inapplicable to the existing conditions in Alaska, and for the further reason that said plank is meaningless and deceptive, and was placed in the Republican platform, evidently, for no other purpose than to deceive the voters of the Territory.

PLATFORM OF THE LABOR PARTY.

We desire the enactment of laws to cover the following resolutions:

(1) A territorial form of government for Alaska under which her citizens may enjoy that degree of freedom to which all Americans are justly entitled.

[Letter of Mr. William Young, of Fairbanks, Alaska, showing the agricultural possibilities of the Tanana Valley of Alaska.]

Hon. JAMES WICKERSHAM,

FAIRBANKS, ALASKA, November 8, 1909.

Delegate to Congress, Fairbanks, Alaska.

MY DEAR JUDGE: In answer to your suggestion that I write you a letter about my farming operations I take pleasure in doing so. When you and Mr. Joslin and Mr. Birch and Mr. White were at my place last fall I had not begun to take in my crops, but since then I have done so. I had 3 acres of potatoes, and they yielded me 18 tons, and the market price was $120 per ton, for which I sold most of them. I had 1 acre of beets, on which I had a crop of 8 tons; 2 acres of carrots, which yielded me 73 tons, with a market price of $140 per ton; 1 acre of turnips, from which I gathered 200 sacks of 80 pounds to the sack, or 8 tons, at $80 per ton. I had 2 tons of ruta-bagas upon one-fourth of an acre of ground, for which the market price was $100 per ton. I had 1 ton of red beets on one-quarter of an acre of ground, at $140 per ton. I had 15 acres of barley, which I cut and sold for hay. I had 3 tons, which I sold for $75 per ton, and still have enough left to fill my barn chuck full for my own use for the winter. I raised 2 tons of cabbages, which I put away for the winter, besides which I sold between 3 and 4 tons during the summer at an average selling price of $140 per ton.

I raised 29 sucking pigs, also 13 pigs which weighed about 100 pounds each, and 23 big hogs. I sold 5 of my hogs to the butcher for $60 each.

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This fall I put in 6 acres of winter wheat, Bluestem, which I sowed the second week in August, and before the snow came in October the wheat was up 2 or 3 inches high, and I never saw a better stand of wheat anywhere. I have raised good winter wheat, barley, and oats, and all kinds of garden vegetables, and in my judgment, as a farmer of more than thirty years' experience, the Tanana Valley is a first-class agricultural country.

My farm is near the river. and is perfectly level. The soil is a sandy loam and is very rich, made up of sediment and silt and sand brought down by the river in ages gone by. The Tanana Valley opposite my farm is 60 miles wide, and there are probably 5,000,000 acres of as good ground as mine in this vicinity. I know from six years' experience on this farm that farming can be made entirely successful, and that this valley can be made to produce everything which can be raised in Minnesota and the Dakotas, and that there is no valley in the North so wide and rich and variable for agricultural purposes as the Tanana Valley.

I have several neighbors immediately around the town of Fairbanks who are engaged in successful farming, and we have in the last year raised almost enough to supply the local market, and there is no question hereafter that the whole local market in the Tanana mines can be supplied from our farms and gardens. WM. YOUNG.

Respectfully.

[Letter of Mr. William Waechter, showing the adaptability of Alaska to farming and stock raising.]

FAIRBANKS, ALASKA, November 8, 1909.

Hon. JAMES WICKERSHAM,

Delegate to Congress, Fairbanks, Alaska.

DEAR SIR: I was born and raised in northern Germany, on the Weser, and, my parents being landowners, farmers, and stock raisers, I learned the farming

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