WHAT'S IN A NAME IN ALASKA?
Abbott, M. F.
What's in a Name in Alaska By M. F. ABBOTT WHEN DELEGATE WICKERSHAM on May 23rd made his opening plea before the Senate Committee on Territories which had under consideration his bill for an...
...Why this Christian consideration for loss to a hostile steamship company...
...The White Pass-Skagway line involved in this case is 110 miles long with 90 miles in Canada and 20 in Alaska, and it charges 20 cents a mile...
...What does this mean...
...The Commerce Commission is taking steps to appeal to the highest court in the land, the Supreme Court of the United States...
...The line has been recouping by grossly overcharging on the 20 miles in Alaska...
...The Humboldt Company then appealed to the Court of Appeals of the District of Columbia and the higher court held that Alaska is a "Territory" and ordered the Interstate Commerce Commission to interfere there...
...Because the Morgan-Guggenheim Syndicate thinks if it can settle with the Steamship Company within 30 days from May 24th, the case as appealed to the Supreme Court by the Commerce Commission will be a "moot case" and will not have the effect of a final decision...
...It wants further law suits for law suits mean delay and delay means everything in Alaska...
...The District Court upheld the Commission...
...It means that certain abuses will no longer exist...
...It means that Syndicate railroads can no longer charge all that the Syndicate thinks the traffic will bear...
...The Alaska Steamship Company—a Syndicate concern—has gradually absorbed all other steamship lines...
...What will be the next step...
...The Humboldt, which carries between Seattle and Skagway, has remained obdurate to all advances to coalesce...
...Since the cases of the Commission take precedence over all other but criminal cases, an opinion is confidently expected in September...
...It is therefore making every effort to settle outside of court and at once, urging that the Humboldt Steamship Company will otherwise lose one summer's trade, for the decision will not come until September...
...And why this haste on the part of the Syndicate to settle...
...What's in a Name in Alaska By M. F. ABBOTT WHEN DELEGATE WICKERSHAM on May 23rd made his opening plea before the Senate Committee on Territories which had under consideration his bill for an Elective Territorial Legislature for Alaska, that Alaska be known as a "Territory" and not as a "District," he did not imagine that the status of Alaska would so soon be fixed by the courts...
...A little more testimony of this sort in court decisions, and it will be generally understood that when you scratch any railroad in Alaska, you scratch the Syndicate...
...Freight and passenger rates on all Alaska railroads have long been exorbitant...
...It means that the overworked argument of the Morgan-Guggenheim Syndicate that Alaska railroads are answerable to nobody but the Syndicate is now removed...
...Re cently the Canadian Commission has cut exactly in half, the rates on the 90 miles under its jurisdiction...
...Yet never before has the Syndicate been willing to pay the costs of a court decision in public, thereby affirming more than "a warm interest" in the railroad which is all Stephen Birch, Managing Director of the Syndicate would own up to on the witness stand...
...Canada has a Commission modeled after our own...
...It has always been known, for example that the White Pass-Skagway line, running from Skagway in Alaska to Whitehorse in the Yukon Territory, is a Syndicate road...
...But he who can put two and two together, knows that Graves the president of the road and the member and local representative of the firm of Close Brothers, London bankers, who "control" the White Pass-Skagway line, was made a "participant" in the Morgan-Guggenheim Syndicate in return for selling out his share in the Copper River Railway when it was merged in the Copper River Northwestern Company...
...Conditions like these will be changed when the Interstate Commerce Commission enters upon the scene...
...In 1909 ten million dollars' worth of gold was shipped from the Fairbanks gold fields to the coast, and it is a matter of record that it cost $5,000,000 in freight charges to get the gold out of the country...
...They came to Washington and asked the Interstate Commerce Commission to interfere in Alaska...
...It has been discriminated against by the White Pass-Skagway line...
...Fighting the Monopoly OUT OF SUCH a condition and upon the plea of discrimination, grew this case of a (still) independent concern, the Humboldt Steamship Company, against the Syndicate...
...The Commission refused, saying the status, whether "District" or "Territory," was undecided...
...Why the Syndicate Wants to Settle BUT THE Alaska Syndicate does not want a final decision to be reached in this case...
...The Humboldt people realized they must fight for their lives...
...The Syndicate Controls the Railroads AMINE of interesting history lies behind this case...
...The Humboldt people carried their case to the District Court...
...On May 24th, the Court of Appeals of the District of Columbia decided in the case of the Humboldt Steamship Company versus the White Pass-Skagway Railroad that Alaska is a "Territory" and that Alaska comes under the jurisdiction of the Interstate Commerce Commission...
Vol. 3 • June 1911 • No. 23
