Alaska (127 page)

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One large bear had waded some feet into the river, where it found success in scooping up exhausted salmon and tossing them back onto the bank, where others leaped upon them, tearing their flesh. This bear, spotting Nerka as the most promising salmon of this morning's run, leaned forward like an ardent angler, sent its right paw flashing through the water, caught Nerka full under the belly, and with a mighty swipe tossed him far behind it, like an angler landing a prize trout.

As Nerka flew through the air he was aware of two things: the bear's claws had ripped his right flank, but not fatally, and the direction in which he was flying contained some areas which looked like water. So as soon as he landed with a hard thump on dry land, with two large bears leaping forward to kill him, he gave a series of wild gyrations, summoning all the power his tail, fins and body muscles could provide.

As the bears reached out with their powerful claws, he wriggled and flopped like a drunken fly trying to land on unsteady legs, and just as the bears were about to grab him, he leaped at one of the shimmering areas. It was a sluggish arm of the river, and he was saved.

Now, as he neared the lake, the unique signal composed of mineral traces, the position of the sun, perhaps the gyration of the earth and maybe the operation of some peculiar electrical force, became overwhelming. For more than two thousand miles he had attended to this signal, and now it throbbed throughout his aging body: This is Lake Pleiades.

This is home.

He reached the lake on 23 September 1906, and when he entered the jewel like body of water with its protecting mountains, he found his way to that small feeder stream with its particular aggregation of gravel in which he had been born six years earlier, and now for the first time in his exciting life he began to look about him not for just another salmon but for a female, and when other males swam by he recognized them as enemies and drove them off. The culminating experience of his life was about to begin, but only he and two others of his original four thousand had made it back to their home waters. All the rest had perished amid the dangers imposed by the incredible cycle of the salmon.

Mysteriously, out of a dark overhang which produced the deep shadows loved by sockeye, she came, a mature female who had shared the dangers he had known, who had in her own way avoided the jiggers reaching out to trap her and who had ascended the waterfalls with her own skills and tricks. She was his equal in every way except for the fierce progna—

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thous lower jaw that he had developed, and she, too, was ready for the final act.

Moving quietly beside him as if to say 'I shall look to you for protection,' she began waving her tail and fins gently, brushing away silt that had fallen upon the gravel she intended using. In time, employing only these motions, she dug herself a redd, or nest, about six inches deep and twice her length, which was now more than two feet. When the redd was prepared, she tested it again to ensure that the steady stream of life-giving cold water was still welling up from the hidden river, and when she felt its reassuring presence, she was ready.

Now the slow, dreamlike courtship dance began, with Nerka nudging closer and closer, rubbing his fins against hers, swimming a slight distance away, then rushing back.

Other males, aware of her presence, hurried up, but whenever one appeared, Nerka drove him off, and the lyrical dance continued.

Then a startling change occurred: both salmon opened their mouths as wide as their jaw sockets would allow, forming large cavernous passageways for the entrance of fresh water. It was as if they wished to purify themselves, to wash away old habits in preparation for what was about to happen, and when this ritual was completed they experienced wild and furious surges of courtship emotions, twisting together, snapping their jaws and quivering their tails. When their marine ballet ended, with their mouths once more agape, the female released some four thousand eggs, and at that precise instant Nerka ejected his milt, or sperm, over the entire area. Fertilization would occur by chance, but the incredible flood of milt made it probable that each egg would receive its sperm and that Nerka and his mate would have done their part in perpetuating their species.

Their destiny having been fulfilled, their mysterious travels were over, and an incredible climax to their lives awaited. Since they had eaten nothing since leaving the ocean, not even a minnow, they were so exhausted by their travel up Taku Inlet, their battle with traps, their swim upstream against waterfalls, that they retained not a shred of vital force. Will power consumed by these tremendous exertions, they began to drift aimlessly, and wayward currents eased them along a nepenthe like course to the spot where the lake emptied into the river.

When they entered the lively swirls of that stream they were momentarily revived, and fluttered their tails in the customary way, but they were so weak that nothing hap—

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pened, and the current dragged them passively to where the falls and the rapids began.

As they reached the fatal spot at the head of the long falls, where bears waited, Nerka summoned enough energy to swim clear, but his mate, near death, could not, and one of the biggest animals reached in, caught her in its powerful claws, and threw her ashore, where other bears leaped at her. In a brief moment she was gone.

Had Nerka been in possession of his faculties, he would never have allowed the long waterfall to grasp him and smash him willy-nilly down its most precipitous drops and onto its most dangerous rocks, but that is what happened, and the last shuddering drop was so destructive that he felt the final shreds of life being knocked out of him. Vainly he tried to regain control of his destiny, but the relentless water kept knocking him abusively from rock to rock, and the last he saw of the earth and its waters of which he had been such a joyous part was a great spume into which he was sucked against his will and the massive rock which lurked therein. With a sickening smash, he was no more.

He had returned to Lake Pleiades system on 21 September 1906. He had fathered the next generation of sockeye on the twenty-fifth, and now on the last day of the month he was dead. He had lived five years, six months and had discharged all obligations courageously and as nature had programmed.

For three miles his dead body drifted downstream, until waves washed it to sanctuary in a backwater where ravens, familiar with the habits of the river, waited. He reached their domain about four in the afternoon of an increasingly cold day when food was essential, and by nightfall only his bones were left.

Of the one hundred million sockeye born along with Nerka in 1901, only some fifty thousand managed to make it back, and since it is reasonable to assume that these were evenly divided between the sexes, this meant that some twenty-five thousand pairs were available for breeding. Since each female produced about four thousand eggs, a total of exactly one hundred million eggs would be available to ensure a generation born in 1907, and we have seen that this is the precise number required to maintain the lake's normal population. Any diminution in the number of survivors would imperil the chance for continuation.

If the jiggers were raised even higher next year, as planned, the number of breeding salmon able to avoid them would be further diminished, so that year by year the deficiency would worsen.

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The greed of Tom Venn

and his masters in Seattle had doomed the Lake Pleiades sockeye, one of the noblest members of the animal kingdom, to eventual extinction.

IN NOVEMBER WHEN THE THOMAS VENNS, AS THEY WERE now called, were in the process of closing down Ketchikan Cannery for the winter, after an excellent campaign, an officer from Ross & Raglan headquarters in Seattle stopped by with depressing news: 'Mr.

Ross asked me to tell you that Nancy Bigears, after only a few weeks at the university, boarded one of our ships and sailed back to Juneau. When asked why she had quit her education, she said: ”Those classes held nothing for me.”'

'What's she doing?' Tom and Lydia wanted to know, and to be sure he gave an accurate answer, the officer took from his pocket a paper which Mr. Ross had given him: 'Two weeks after arriving in Juneau, Nancy married a Chinese handyman named Ah Ting.'

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XI

THE RAILBELT

In the summer of 1919, when Malcolm Ross, age sixty-seven, lay dying, he knew that he was leaving his prominent mercantile establishment, Ross & Raglan, in the most profitable condition it had ever known. In the three areas to which it restricted itself maritime service to Alaska; warehouses in Anchorage, Juneau and Fairbanks, with retail stores in most of the towns; the catching and canning of salmon it was preeminent. R&R represented the finest forward-looking leadership in Seattle, and commentators were not far wrong when they said: 'R&R is Alaska, and Alaska is R&R,'

for the relationship was profitable to both partners. R&R received money, a great deal of it, and Alaska received the goods it needed and a reliable transportation service to what was called the Lower Forty-Eight. Since there were no roads from Alaska to either industrial Canada or the United States, and no likelihood of any in the foreseeable future, any goods that Alaska needed had almost inevitably to reach the north in some R&R ship, and any travelers who wanted to leave Alaska for the south had to use that same route.

But Ross had for some time been aware of a potential weakness in his company's benevolent monopoly, and anxious to discuss the situation, he summoned his daughter Lydia to his bedside, asking her to bring along her husband, Tom Venn, who for more than a decade had supervised the company's chain of salmon canneries. When they stood be-776

side him, and saw how frail he had become through overexertion during the closing months of the recent world war, they were alarmed, but he would allow no sentimentality: 'I'm not strong, as you can see, but my mind's as good as ever.'

'Take it easy, Father,' Lydia said. 'The men at the office have things under control.'

'I didn't call you here to talk about the office. I'm worried about the insecurity of our shipping lines to Alaska.'

'Traffic's impeccable,' Tom said, who at an energetic thirty-six had traveled the R&R ships more than any other officer. He knew the shipping line to be in first-class condition.

'For the present, yes. But I'm looking ahead, and I see danger.'

'From what?' Lydia asked, and after raising himself on one elbow, her father replied: 'Competition. Not from American companies, we have them in line and none of them can touch us. But from Canada, they're able traders. And from Japan, they're very able.'

'We have been seeing signs,' Venn conceded. 'We can hold them off, I'm sure, but what did you have in mind?'

'Cabotage,' the sick man said as he fell back. 'Do you know what it is?' When the young people shook their heads, he said: 'Find out!' and that launched their study of this arcane law of the sea and its coastal waters. The word came from the French caboter meaning to coast along, and through the centuries it had gained in diplomatic circles a specific application: the right to transport goods between two ports within the same country. As applied by mercantile nations, it meant that a Japanese ship built in Japan, owned in Japan, and manned by Japanese sailors was legally eligible to sail out of Yokohama laden with Japanese goods and sail to Seattle, where, if the proper duty was paid, the goods could be unloaded and sold in the United States. The ship could then pick up American goods and carry them back to Japan, or China or Russia.

But when the Japanese ship finished unloading at Seattle, it was forbidden to engage in cabotage, that is, it could not pick up either cargo or passengers in Seattle and carry them to some other American port, say San Francisco. And, specifically, it could not deliver American items to Alaska. Any goods or passengers traveling from one American port to another had to be transported in American ships manned by American sailors, and not even the slightest deviation was allowed. Businessmen in Seattle revered the principle of cabotage as if it were Scripture, for it ensured them protection from competition from Asian vessels whose poorly paid 777

crews enabled them to move freight at the lowest cost. So the more deeply the two young Venns probed into the intricacies of cabotage, the more clearly they saw that the future of Seattle, and especially the profitability of their family firm, depended upon the retention, strengthening and strict application of cabotage.

When they next gathered at their father's sickbed to discuss the matter, he showed his pleasure at their quick mastery of the situation, but he was distressed at their failure to identify the next step Seattle would have to take to protect itself completely: 'Tom, the people of Alaska aren't going to support any strengthening of cabotage.

In fact, they're going to fight against it. In Congress.'

Venn nodded: 'They would get their goods a lot cheaper if ships from Europe and Asia could haul them. Maybe even ships from Canada would be able to undercut us.'

'I'm especially afraid of the Canadians. So what you must do when Congress takes up the matter, which the people of Alaska will insist upon, is line up a type of support we've never had before.'

'I don't understand. Cabotage is a shipping concern. We're for it. The businessmen of Seattle are for it. West Coast shippers are for it. But who else?'

'That's where statesmanship comes in. Move away from the coasts. Enlist a whole new body of supporters in cities like Pittsburgh, Chicago and St. Louis.'

'And how do we do that?'

'Labor. Add one simple provision to the navigation bills and you'll have all labor shouting support for our cabotage bills.'

'And what is this magical provision?' Lydia asked, and her father replied: 'Require that the American ship, owned by American businessmen and staffed by American officers and seamen, be built entirely in American shipyards by American workers.' As he finished his prescription for the ensured growth of Seattle and the R&R shipping lines, he settled back on his pillows and smiled, for he was convinced that if such a bill could be shepherded through Congress, the possibility that Alaska might somehow evade control from Seattle would be eliminated.

But his clever son-in-law spotted the danger in relying upon Congress to pass a law which would aid the few and harm the many. 'Alaska will fight like hell to prevent a law like that,' he warned the old man, who merely nodded: 'Of course they'll protest.

They've never understood, up there, that they must rely on us for their well-being.

R&R has never taken one nickel out of Alaska that wasn't justified. It'll be 778

the same way with the bill I'm talking about. We'll pass it to protect Alaska from herself.'

'How?' Tom asked, and he received a recommendation he did not savor: 'We'll do it as we've always done it. The West Coast hasn't enough power in Congress to do it alone, but we do have friends in the other states. We must mobilize those friends, and there's only one man can do that job for us.' Tom felt a sinking feeling in his stomach, and he was right to be apprehensive, for Ross said firmly: 'Get Marvin Hoxey.'

'But he's a crook!' Tom cried, recalling his distaste for this fraudulent operator.

'He still carries weight in Washington. If you want to protect our interests in Alaska, get Hoxey.'

This Tom was reluctant to do, but in the anxious days that followed, as the directors of R&R convened to decide whom to select as Malcolm Ross's successor as head of the company, it became clear that Ross was not going to bestow his blessing on Tom Venn unless the latter hired Marvin Hoxey, the proven lobbyist, to maneuver a new maritime bill through Congress. Her father warned Lydia, when she met with him alone: 'If Tom doesn't get Hoxey out here right away, I'll tell the board outright that he's not the man to replace me.'

'But Hoxey is an evil man, Father. He's shown that again and again.'

'He's an able man. He does what he says he'll do, and that's all that counts.'

'And you'll block Tom if he refuses?'

'I must think about the safety of my company. I must do what's right.'

'You call hiring a crook doing what's right?'

'Under the circumstances, yes.'

That night Lydia told her husband: 'I think you'd better telephone Hoxey.'

'I will not do that.'

'But, Tom ...”

'I will not humiliate myself again in connection with that swindler.'

There was a protracted silence, after which Lydia said quietly: 'When Father dies, I'll be the principal stockholder . . . Mother's shares and the ones he'll leave me. So I must act to protect my interests. I'm calling Hoxey.' Tom, in disgust, left the room, but as he paced back and forth outside the door he realized that he was forcing a break between himself and his wife, and at a moment when she deserved his fullest support, so he returned to the room, just as Lydia finished putting hi the call. Taking the telephone, he said with as much control as possible: 'Marvin Hoxey?

This is Tom

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Venn.... Yes, we knew each other in Nome during the great days, and during the salmon leases. . . . Yes, I'm married to Lydia Ross. . . . Sorry to tell you that her father is quite ill. . . . Yes, he wants to complete one big job before he dies.. . . He needs you. Right away. . . . Yes, Alaska.' A long silence followed, during which the ebullient lobbyist delivered an oration. . . . 'Yes, I'll tell her.'

When he hung up, he looked sheepishly at Lydia: 'The old rascal! He'd already guessed what Seattle would want done on the maritime bill. Had already started visiting congressmen on the assurance we'd call.'

'What else did he say? During that one long spell?'

'He said he knew Alaska like the back of his hand and that everything was going to be all right.'

Shortly thereafter the wily old campaigner came to Seattle to consult with Malcolm Ross. Sixty-four years old, heavyset, florid efface and clean-shaven, he breezed into the sickroom, cocked his right forefinger as if it were a pistol, and fired an imaginary bullet at Ross: 'I want you out of that bed by nightfall. Orders.'

'I wish I could obey, Marvin. But the ...”He tapped his chest and smiled. 'Draw up a chair and listen.' And as the dying merchant prince lay in bed, he plotted his last great strategy for the enhancement of Seattle.

In these years the state of Washington was represented in the Senate of the United States by a hardworking, amiable Republican named Wesley L. Jones, whose devotion to duty had elevated him to the chairmanship of the important Senate Commerce Committee.

Always attentive to the interests of his home state, he had listened when Malcolm Ross consulted with him concerning ways to nail down permanently all traffic heading for Alaska. He agreed early and firmly that nations like Japan and Canada should be eliminated from the profitable trade, and he saw no good reason why the established state of Washington should not take precedence over the unformed territory of Alaska, but he cautioned Ross and his fellow Seattleites: 'It's not like the old days, gentlemen.

Alaska is beginning to have a voice in our nation's capital. That little son-of-a-bitch Sheldon Jackson, no bigger than a pinpoint, he stirred up a lot of good Christians back there. We can't just run your bill through this time. We'll have to work on it, and work hard.'

It was in April of that year that the Seattle men had awakened to the opposition which existed in the industrial states and those along the Mississippi. At the last meeting he chaired before becoming bedridden, Ross had reported: 'You'd be astonished at some of the charges they're making 780

against us. They say we're robbers, pirates trying to keep Alaska to ourselves. We've got to come up with some new tactic.'

Just who it was who had the clever idea of enlisting labor in the fight to keep Alaska a colony was not recorded; Ross had not been at the meeting when this was first proposed, but as soon as members of his committee brought the suggestion to his bedside, he had grasped its significance: 'Ride that one very hard. We're not trying to protect our interests. We're thinking only of the American workingman, the American sailor.'

Now, in the closing weeks of his life, he outlined to both Marvin Hoxey and Tom Venn the strategy that would enable Senator Jones to ramrod through a maritime bill in 1920, the one that would remain in force for the rest of the century, binding Alaska in the harshest, most restrictive fetters any American territory would know since the days of King George Ill's repressive measures which had goaded the Colonies to revolt.

No one in the entire American political establishment was more influential in getting this act passed than Marvin Hoxey. Only three years younger than Malcolm Ross, he had four times the explosive energy and ten times the shameless gall. It took him less than three minutes to perceive the brilliance of enlisting labor in the fight, and before that first meeting ended, he had devised a presentation which would capture the imagination of congressmen in all parts of the nation. It required him to patrol the halls in Washington, while Tom Venn visited those state capitals whose representatives would cast the deciding votes.

Tom did not appreciate the assignment, for it meant that he would have to telephone Washington every night to inform Hoxey as to how things were going, and he might have refused to serve as Hoxey's assistant had not Malcolm Ross taken a sharp turn for the worse. Informed of the situation, Lydia and Tom rushed to his bedside, and when the two stood before him he gave them their last commission: 'Any industry of magnitude faces moments of crisis . . . when decisions of life and death are in the process of being made. Choose right, up to the stars. Choose wrong, down to Avernus.'

He coughed, then flashed that smile which had served him so well at other times when he was striving to convince people: 'And the hell of it is, usually we don't recognize that the decision is vital. We make it blind.' He coughed again, his shoulders shaking violently; now the smile left his drawn lips and he said softly: 'But this time we do know. The prosperity of this part of the nation depends upon getting 781

Senator Jones's bill enacted.' He asked Tom to promise that for the next crucial months he would work with full vigor on this campaign: 'Let the company guide itself.