COMMITTEE TO PROBE ALASKA OPERATIONS
Committee to Probe Alaska Operations ALTHOUGH patents have not been issued to the Cunningham coal claimants in Alaska, and although Secretary Ballinger is quoted by witnesses as having said that...
...Brandeia asked that Messrs...
...Dudley was recently removed from the office of register of the land office at Juneau and asked Love to see Secretary Ballinger about his case...
...He finally declared that the reason he did not push the prosecutions which Glavis said he urged upon him was that Glavis and Jones, whom he charged with indolence, had not submitted sufficient information...
...Spaulding, Parks and O'Neill be directed to remain for further testimony...
...Todd charged Glavis with not having sent it and said Glavis had so admitted...
...Christenson had found the letters in the Glavis box, February 8, this year, soon after the investigating committee met He declared that Christenson said he was looking for something else...
...This question is everywhere asked...
...He said that Ballinger had told him that any agreement made before patents were issued would be illegal...
...It greatly transcends in importance the other question of whether or not Secretary Ballinger shall be found wanting...
...The vote was six to three, those voting for tabling being Senators Sutherland and Purcell and Representatives McCall, Olmstead, Denby and Madison, and against, Senator Fletcher and Representatives Graham and James...
...Brandeis and Nelson Clash THE proceedings were enlivened almost at the very start Friday by a sharp clash between Chairman Nelson and Attorney Brandeis, representing L. R. Glavis...
...One item was for $56 for three typewritten copies of the report he sent the President...
...One of the interesting developments was the summoning by the committee of John W. Dudley of Juneau, Alaska, to appear and testify...
...Love said that while his report had not recommended the issuance of patents, he believed the Cunningham claims were entitled to patents under the poor law on the subject...
...He charged Jones with having peddled lies about him although it was shown that Jones had not been sent to take charge of the work until a month before Love met him...
...Todd admitted having many meetings with Jones, but denied having used such language...
...How much of the uncountable wealth of Alaska has already passed into the hands of the syndicate with its control of the railway and steamship lines, its fisheries and its enormous copper and other mine holdings...
...He also admitted that Hanford was interested in a water power project and had delivered addresses at the Seattle fair in which he opposed the conservation policies of Garfield and Pinchot...
...Todd relative to prosecutions in the Watson Allen coal cases and the Cunningham letters which Glavis is charged with having abstracted on being removed from office...
...James and Senator Fletcher protested against letting the remark stand as the sense of the committee...
...Graham insisted that the chair was regarded as the spokesman of the committee...
...After much uproar, Mr...
...They made a cursory search of the Glavis box, which was open, but saw no papers therein...
...Attorney Bradeis then sought to show that witness had been removed for not showing results in the Alaska cases, in not discovering the Cunningham-Guggenheim agreement and other things which Glavis and Jon is uncovered...
...Without permitting further questioning which would indicate whether such letter did really go, Chairman Nelson sternly asked counsel his purpose in misleading the committee by going on the assumption that such letter had been sent...
...This was due to a remark dropped by Marshal H. K. Love of Alaska, before leaving the stand Saturday, that Dudley had told Love recently that a representative of Collier*8 Weekly had told him (Dudley) that "it would be worth from $5,000 to $10,000 for you to go to Washington to testify...
...She identified the letters presented...
...Ballinger, he said, was a good friend of Hanford...
...It was brought out that soon after Special Agent Christenson succeeded Glavis a large box containing a mass of papers thought worthless was removed from the office...
...But little important testimony was brought out, and so far from regarding them as damaging to Glavis, the latter's attorney has detained several of the witnesses to be used as rebuttal for his own side...
...Some weeks after transcribing them, at the request of Attorney Sheridan, she made an unsuccessful search for them, she said, in the parts of the office open to her...
...Stenographer Identifies Letters ELLA M. SHARTELL, stenographer in the land office at Seattle, told of copying for Glavis the twenty-four missing Cunningham letters which the Ballinger side said were found among the private effects of Glavis at Seattle, but which Glavis charges were placed there by the other side...
...Attorney Brandeis was questioning District Attorney Elmer E. Todd of the Seattle district regarding a letter Glavis had written to the land department, but which Todd declared never reached that destination...
...Representative Graham moved that the chair be required to withdraw the question, which the chair declared he would not...
...Todd denied that Ballinger's name had been omitted from the records of certain coal cases...
...George W. Parks, assistant in the Seattle office, testified to going with G. W. O'Neill, assistant custodian of the federal building, to the storeroom where Glavis' effects were, to seek for the field books of Special Agent Bowman...
...Love Favored Cunningham Claims FORMER Special Agent H. K. Love, now a marshall in Alaska, and on whose report the Cunningham claims were ordered clearlisted, was the next witness...
...Graham demanded a roll call...
...Ballinger Witnesses Testify AHALF dozen witnesses were called by the Ballinger side at last week's hearing, principally to impeach the testimony of Glavis and Special Agent Jones...
...McCall moved to table the motion, but Mr...
...Madison, although strongly disapproving of the language used, declared the people of the country would not regard it as such, since the chair was only one member of the committee, but Mr...
...Later Glavis sought to cut out this item of $55 and to repay it to the government, the explanation of his attorney being that Glavis wanted to keep the copies of the report himself...
...Many of the syndicate's ramifications are already known, at least enough to give the people profound alarm...
...Committee to Probe Alaska Operations ALTHOUGH patents have not been issued to the Cunningham coal claimants in Alaska, and although Secretary Ballinger is quoted by witnesses as having said that any agreement entered into before patents issued would be illegal, nevertheless so profound is the interest taken by the people in the Alaskan controversy that the congressional committee making the so-called Ballinger-Pinehot inquiry has called for all available documentary evidence on the relations of the Morgan-Guggenheim syndicate with the Cunningham and other coal claimants...
...Todd Contradicts Jones ATTORNEY VERTREES questioned Mr...
...He denied the statement of Jones that he (Love) had been half-hearted in his work because he was a candidate for marshal and did not want to offend Alaska people, and declared he had refused to sign the Jones report on the coal claims because he was angered at having been superseded...
...Nevertheless the committee decided to summon Dudley...
...He also said he advised Christenson, Glavis' successor, not to attempt prosecution of Glavis on the charge of abstracting letters, holding the evidence was insufficient...
...Brandeis hotly resented such reflection and demanded a retraction of the question...
...Special Agent H. T. Jones had previously testified that Todd had declared that it was useless to attempt prosecutions because Judge Hanford was "constitutionally opposed to land fraud cases...
...O'Neill then told how he and Mr...
...How far have they extended in these latest designs on the coal beds— the territory's greatest wealth—is one of the questions which the committee is expected to answer...
...Frank L. Spaulding of Cheyenne, who was disbursing officer and clerk in Glavis' office at Seattle, was called and told of preparing an expense account for Glavis, against the government, about the time last year that Glavis went to see the President...
...Love said he had not taken Dudley's remark seriously and had not said anything to Ballinger about it...
Vol. 2 • April 1910 • No. 14
