alongside rich coal-fields, but if I picked up a chunk from my own claim to throw at a chipmunk I’d become a lawbreaker.  I import from Canada the fuel to drive my locomotives past my own coal-beds—­which I have paid for—­and I pay five times the value of that fuel, forty percent of which is duty.  I haul it two thousand miles, while there are a billion tons of better quality beneath my feet.  Do you call that conservation?  I call it waste.”

“Fraud was practised at the start, and of course it takes time to find out just where it lay.”

“That’s the excuse, but after all these years no fraud has been proved.  In administering the criminal law there is an axiom to the effect that it is better for ninety-nine guilty men to escape than for one innocent man to suffer, but the Land Office says that ninety-nine innocent Alaskans shall suffer rather than that one guilty man shall escape.  The cry of fraud is only a pretense, raised to cover the main issue.  There’s something sinister back of it.”

“What do you mean?”

“A conspiracy of the Eastern coal-operators and the transcontinental freight-lines.”

“How ridiculous!” cried Eliza.

“You think so?  Listen!  Since all the high-grade coal of the Pacific coast must come from the East, who, then, would discourage the opening of local fields but those very interests?  Every ton we burn means a profit to the Eastern miner and the railroad man.  Yes, and twenty per cent. of the heat units of every ton hauled are consumed in transportation.  Isn’t that waste?  Every two years it costs our navy the price of a battle-ship to bring coal to the Pacific fleet, while we have plenty of better fuel right here on the ground.  Our coal is twenty-five hundred miles nearer to the Philippines than San Francisco, and twelve thousand miles nearer than its present source.  If Alaskan coal-beds were opened up, we wouldn’t have this yearly fight for battle-ship appropriations; we’d make ourselves a present of a first-class navy for nothing.  No, our claims were disputed, and the dispute was thrown into politics to keep us out of competition with our Eastern cousins.  We Alaskans sat in a game with high stakes, but after the cards were dealt the rules were changed.”

“You argue very well,” said Eliza, who was a bit dazed at this unexpected, forceful counter-attack, “but you haven’t convinced me that this coal should be thrown open to the first person who comes along.”

“I didn’t expect to convince you.  It’s hard to convince a woman whose mind is made up.  It would take hours to cover the subject; but I want to open your eyes to the effect of this new-fangled national policy.  Any great principle may work evil if it isn’t properly directed, and in Kyak you’ll see the results of conservation ignorantly applied.  You’ll see how it has bound and gagged a wonderful country, and made loyal Americans into ragged, bitter traitors who would spit upon the flag they used to cherish.”