a
Continued from page one.
$200,000 which was endorsed by Mr. Ballaine and was repaid a year Defore
it was due. Mr. Ballaine was very efficient indeed in the construction of the
railroad'*.
J. W. Godwin of Seattle, bank director, wholeiale merchant, capitalist,
one of Mr. Ballaine’s associates in the organization and promotion of the Alas
ka Central, and its treasurer during that period: ‘‘In all that time (under Mr.
Ballaine’s control) every just bill against the Company was promptly met and
paid. The building of the Alaska Central was due entirely to your foresight
and untiring energy and the building of the Alaska Railroad by the Govern
ment over the route you laid out and by the plans you laid down, taking in
the Alaska Central as the first section, was the fulfillment of your plans and
work.”
The volume will include a brief auto biographical sketch of Mr. Ballaine.
He was born in Iowa, Sept. 2. 1S6S, of Norman Huguenot parents who were
natives of the Island of Jersey, and who came to Iowa in 1848. His father’s
and mother’s families had been land owners in that Norman Island of Jersey
since the Twelfth century under title direct from the Duke of Normandy. One
of his Jersey ancestors through both his father’s and mother’s families was
George Carteret, a Jerseyman of an old Norman family there, founder of the
colony of New Jersey. Another was Captain James Ballaine, who was in the
British fleet that captured New Amsterdam, New York, from the Dutch in
1664. The late Dean of Jersey, Rev. G. O. Ballaine, was of his family.
Mr. Ballaine’s father, who had been educated at Oxford, England, died in
1882 from wounds received in the Civil war. Left at 13 on his own resources,
with a widowed mother and younger brothers to help support, Mr. Ballaine
grew' up in eastern Washington, finished High School and two years in Col
lege, taught school, was for several years in newspaper work, filling every
position on a city daily* up to managing editor, was Secretary to the^ Governor
of Washington, and was Adjutant General of the State of Washington with
the rank of Brigadier General, all before he was1 29 years of age. He served*18
months in the Spanish-Ameriean war in the Philippines as a Company officer
in the First Washington Regiment.
On his return fron^ the Philippines service he undertook his Alaskan rail
road wark and other development enterprises, the results of which have
shaped, and will continue to shape or influence, the whole future of Alaska*s
history.
BY JOHN E. BALLAINE
‘‘Laying the Foundation of Alaska'*
/ INTRODUCTORY
CHAPTER I
A lifting of the curtain from the
stage of Alaskan scenes and activi
ties in the first quarter of the Twen
tieth century presents a drama in
true history on the»4ast frontier wicli
out parallel in American fiction or
reality.
The stage was more northerly,, fur
ther detached from the rest of the
United States, beset with bigger and
whiter mountains and wfter rivers,
warmed by longer summer days and
chilled by crisper winter nights, and
the dense forests and the tall grasses
were of greener hue,than any that the
•past frontiers had known.
The parts and scenes of the drama
offered in succession excited and
stampeding prospectors and adven
turers pouring in by streaming thou
sands from all continents of the
earth to the latest of gold mining
discoveries, and off again to newer
camps; transitory, and shambling
towns on the coast and on the banks
of interior rivers which sheltered
milling and noisy throngs for a brief
spell,then faded to silent groups of
empty and deserted log cabins; other
towns of later origin grown steadily
into modern communities, with stores
and hotels, public schools and
churches and lodges, and theatres
and daily newspapers.
Suddenly, out of a clear sky, riv
alries and clashes si ruck fiercely in
titanic blows to gain control of val
uable bodies of Alaska’s mineral
wealth, or to reap advantages of rail
road transportation, which reverbrat
ed to the breath of the continent,
and embroiled three Presidential ad_
ministrations in tempest or disaster.
As a finale of the drama, a system
of Goverment owned railroad was
in operation from Seward to Fair
banks; telephones and telegraph and
wireless united Alaska in a net of
instantaneous communication, all
converging at the central and con
trolling station in Seward, and
thence by cable and wireless to the
States and the world; six modern
steamships operated from Puget
Sound 1o Seward, and five out of
Seward to the westward; the geo
graphy of Alaska’s future was defin
itely cast in routes of railroad travel
and commerce permanently fixed;
new towns and little cities were dis
playing all of the latest adjuncts and
improvements of the most advanced
civilizations; farms and gardens were
being settled and improved, and new
industries were rising.
It was the .formative period in the
life and growth of a Territory that
embraces an area of 950,000 square
I. .— I
miles in the same latitudes and un* j
der the same conditions of climate as
i
the corresponding areas, of North
western Europe which support 27,
500,000 of the world's hardiest popu-!
lation; a Territory whose mountains |
and valleys hold resources of coal |
and the .precious metals, of timber, j
of grazing lands, and of productive j
agricultural soil, and whose waters
sustain food fishes, in varieties and
quantities which by comparison
would make it the potential and pos
sible home of twice 27,500,000 of
American citizens.
But in the early days of the
Twentieth century Alaska was un
known or misunderstood by the
masses of the American people. They
were eager only for the placer gold
and the quick riches it offered. Most
of them had formed preconceived
ideas about Alaska from mistaken
and misleading text books in schools,
and they were unable or unwilling to
readjust their minds to the disclos
ures that explorations and investiga
tions brought to light. They were
indifferent to its fate.
Only a lew men at tins period
grasped the magnitude of Alaska’s
treasures and possibilities or the fav
orable aspects of its invigorating
climate. This lack of knowledge and
this indifference by the multitudes,
amounting almost to a refusal to ad
mit the truths before their eyes, off
set with a keen appreciation of its
opportunities by the few, made a
■problem and a crisis in the destiny
of Alaska. Its issues finally awaken
ed the masses of people.
Was this land of empire in extent
and of boundless opportunities to be
given over as an exclusive field for
private' exploitation,, or was it to be
opened wide for settlement and de
velopment as the home of many mil
lions of Americans in the future,
with its star on the American flag
representng it in the Union of the
United States of America?
It is now universally agreed by all
who have been familiar with Alaskan
affairs for the last 25 years that the
building and completion of the Gov
ernment owned Alaska Railroad from
Sewrard to Fairbanks, 470 mile? in
length writh branches totaling 93
miles more, wras the event and the
achievement that fundamentally
changed the whole course of Alaska’s
future groAvth and development. It
made certain the destiny of Alaska
as a land of homes and opportunities
for a large share of the increasing
millions in ' e United States who
will occupy " last of the world’s
vacant spaces, under a new .policy
of the Government’s first venture in
to building and operating its own
railroads.
Also, I think it is universally
granted by all who are familiar with
Alaskan affairs through this forma
tive period that the building and
'completion of the Alaska Railroad
I from Seward to Fairbanks, and the
i founding of Seward as its ocean ter
minus and gateway, are the results
of my initiative and work and per
severance through all the tempestu
ous years from 1902 to 1923.
There were vicissitudes in the ac
complishment of that undertaking,
as usual and inevitable in .poineer
adventures, but a* every crisis the
burden and the responsibility of re_
viving and continuing it fell upon my
shoulders.
| The successive stages in the pro
gress and evolution !of Seward
ar.d ilie Alaska Railroad take outline
!substantially in this form and order:
1902: -My conceiving and organiz
ing the Alaska Central Railway
Company, raising the money to ex
plore and survey a route, and man
aging that survey and adopting its
route, from Resurrection Bay to the
Tanana River;
1903:—'Founding of Seward and
building of railroad dock and ter
minals;
1903-'-5:—'My taking the contract
to bui ;• 412 miles of the Alaska Cen
tral mafh line from Seward to the
Tanana River through the agency of
the Tanana Construction Company,
which I organized and owned, and
the building of the first section ot
the railroad to Kenai Lake undet
that contract, with financial backing
of Chicago capitalists, the E. A.
Shedd Syndicate.
1905:—My sale of the Tanana Con
struction Company to Frost & Os
borne of Chicago and Toronto, and
with It control of the Alaska Central,
in a contract binding them to com
plete the Alaska Central, at a figure
giving principal and substantial prof
its to myself and all my financial
backers and associates;
1905-6-7:—Continuing of construc
tion under Frost & Osborne owner
ship, with the backing of the Sover
iegn Bank of Canada, to Turnagain
Arm;
1907;—Failure of the Sovereign
"Bank of Canada in the panic that
gripped Canada and the United
States, and with it failure of Frost
& Osborne and their Alaska Central;
1908-9:—Reorganization of the Al_
aska Central by the receivers of the
Sovereign Bank of Canada into the
Alaska Northern, and their futile ef
forts to refinance it;
1910- 15:—Practical abandonment
of the reorganized Alaska Central
Alaska Northern by the Canadian
owners;
1910:—Notice to me by New York
bankers owning the Copper River &
Northwestern Railroad that they
would not allow the Alaska Central
to be extended to the Tanana valley,
after I had undertaken to rehabili
tate it;
1911- 12-13:—My countering that
notice with a campaign to have the
Government build a system of rail
roads in Alaska;
1913:—Contests and rivalries be_
fore Congress involving many Alas
kan towns and grbups of interests
over Alaska Railroad legislation;
„ 1914:— Success of my campaign in
passage by Congress of the Alaska
Railroad Actr the bill I had support
ed, in preference to others;
1914- 15:—Active and keen rivalries
by many towns and interests, includ
ing the powerful New York bankers
who owned the Copper River & North
western Railroad, the Alaska Steam
boat Company, and three lines of
transcontinental railroads 'terminat
ing at Seattle, over the route of the
Alaska Railroad to be designated by
President Wilson, with myself alone
championing the Seward-Susitna
route; ^
1915, April 10:—Final triumph of
my efforts in the President’s official
designation of the location of the
route of the Alaska Railroad from
Seward to Fairbanks, with Seward
named as its ocean terminus;
1915- 23:—Building of the Alaska
Railroad by the Government through
absorption of the Alaska Central
Alaska Northern under condemna
tion at its own price and extension
jand completion from Seward to Fair
banks over the Alaska Central survey.
If I had not lived, it is certain that
i there would be no Seward on Res
urrection Bay, no railroad extending
from Seward to the Interior of Alas
ka at Fairbanks, and none of the
numerous towns and settlements and
industries it has brought into being
I
I
I
along its highway of steel.
Original documents are of record
in Alaska and in Washington, D. C.,
including hearings before Congress
ional committees through several
years, and the hearings before com
mittees and the debates in the House
and Senate of Congress on the Alas
ka Railroad Act, approved MaVch 12,
1914, which afford full particulars o!
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 its 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 in favor of the route from
Valdez, or later from Cordova, to the
Interior mining districts. The com
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 I can
say incidently and truly, and with
propriety, that the explanation is to
be found in part at least in the rest- j
less and ambitious spirit of the Vik
ings, or Norsemen, or Normans. All j
of my ancestors in every branch for j
950 years have been of that race, j
Furthermore, I was not daunted by
the opposing opinions of overwhelm
ing numbers. I 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
er, to county official, to newspaper
worker in all positions up to manag
ing editor on a city daily, to Gover
nor’s Secretary, and to Adjutant Gen
eral of the State of Washington with
the rank of Brigadier General, all be
fore I was 29 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 diffi
culties 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 its 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 th escope of my visions.
But the locations I chose for my
railroad .project and for its terminus
on the coast of Alaska, after a year
and a half of careful investigation,
were not the ones that the popular
clamor of the moment unanimously
favored and insistantly demanded.
Moreover, my route did not head for
the Klondike. Instead, I directed, it
straight into and through 'the central
and fertile valleys of Alaska, where
no white habitation then existed,
since gold had not yet been discov
ered in the Tanana district, and Fair
banks was a year in the future. Both
my project and myself in conse
quence met an avalanche of ridicule
and derision from the doubters in
general, and from the 8000 stamped
ers in particular who had rushed to
Valdez on the recommendation of the
War Department in 1898, strengthen
ed by the recommendation of a visit
ing Senatorial committee in 1903,
that a railroad should be built from
that port through the hi.^h and bar
ren Copper River valley to Eagle on
the Yukon, 40 miles below the Kina.
dike.
Disregarding the double: ?, 1 was
possessed with such abundance of
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 hanking 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
of the Tanana Construction Company
and control of the Alaska Central and
the work accomplished under the ow
nership of Frost and Osborne, and
counting advance construction beyond
the end of the rails, there was in 190S
the equivalent of 100 miles of com
pleted railroad from Seward north, as
estimated by its chief engineer, and
afterward corroborated by Govern
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. Its 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 Cen
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,
I realized that no other power than
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
privately owned railroad.
In the critical period from May 2,
1913, when Official Hearings were be
gun before Congressional Committees
on two radically different Alaska Rail
road bills, to April 10,1915, w,hen Pres
ident Wilson officially designated the
location of the Alaska Railroad from
Seward through the Susitna valley,
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 lobbies and
through newspapers they controlled
in striving for legislation and for ac
tion that would locate and build a
Government railroad by way of the
Co-pper River valley, connecting at
Chitina with their Copper River &
Northwestern. By devious channels
of secret influence, they had gained
the strategic advantage of securing a
report by the Alaska Railroad Com
mission of 1912 recommending their
route. ...That Commission had been ap
pointed by President Taft with their
approval, and apparently on their rec
ommendation.
I was compelled in the course of
Official Hearings before the House
Committee on Territories in July,
1913, to demolish the force of that re
port by proving thafit had been pre
concertedly framed, was based upon
incorrect and mislaiding statements,
(Continued on Page Eight)