"Because all development, all industry, in the north depends on the opening up of such a body of coal. And these fields are the most accessible to the coast. A few hundreds of miles of railroad, the extension of one or two of the embryo lines on which construction has been suspended, would make the coal available on Prince William Sound. Used by the Pacific Navy, it would save the Government a million dollars a year on transportation." The prosecuting attorney looked at the jury again in triumph. "And that, gentlemen, is why the Prince William Development Company was so ready to finance one of those embryo railroads; why those Matanuska coal claims were located by the syndicate's stenographers, bookkeepers, any employee down here in their Seattle offices. Mr. Tisdale, if those patents had been allowed and the claims had been turned over to the company, would it not have given the Morganstein interests a monopoly on Alaska coal?" Tisdale paused a thoughtful moment. "No, at least only temporarily, if at all. Out of those eight millions of acres of coal land already discovered in Alaska, not more than thirty-two thousand acres have been staked--only one claim, an old and small mine on the coast, has been allowed." His glance moved slowly over the jury, from face to face, and he went on evenly: "You can't expect capital to invest without some inducement. The Northern Pacific, the first trans-continental railroad in the United States, received enormous land grants along the right of way; but the Prince William Development Company, which intends ultimately to bridge distances as vast, to tap the unknown resources of the Alaska interior, has not asked for concessions, beyond the privilege to develop such properties as it may have acquired by location and purchase. Surely the benefit that railroad would be in opening the country to settlement and in the saving of human life, should more than compensate for those few hundreds of acres of the Government's coal." "Mr. Tisdale," said the attorney sharply, "that, in an employee of the Government, is a strange point of view." Tisdale's hands sought his pockets; he returned Mr. Bromley's look with his steady, upward gaze from under slightly frowning brows. "The perspective changes at close range," he said. "The Government knows less about its great possession of Alaska than England knew about her American colonies, one hundred and fifty years ago. The United States had owned Alaska seventeen years before any form of government was established there; more than thirty before a criminal code was provided, and thirty-three years before she was given a suitable code of civil laws. Now, to-day, there are no laws operative in Alaska under which title may be acquired to coal land. Alaska has yielded hundreds of millions of dollars from her placers, her fisheries, and furs, but the only thing the Government ever did for Alaska was to import reindeer for the use of the Esquimos."