30 CONSERVATION THROUGH ENGINEERING. 



ity and experience. It has been well and solidly built as a perma- 

 nent road, not an exploiting road. It has been built for as little 

 money as private parties could have built it, as all competent inde- 

 pendent engineers who have seen the road advise. 



Edwin F. Wendt, of the Interstate Commerce Commission, in 

 charge of valuation of the railroads of the United States from Pitts- 

 burgh to Boston, after an investigation into the manner in which 

 the Alaskan Railroad was constructed and its cost, reported to me 

 as follows : 



In concluding, it is not amiss to aga*in state that after the full study which 

 was given to the property during our trip, we are satisfied that the project is 

 being executed rapidly and efficiently by men of experience and ability. It is 

 believed that it is being handled as cheaply as private contractors could handle 

 it under the circumstances. 



The road has not been built as soon as expected because each year 

 we have exhausted our appropriation before the work contemplated 

 had been done. We could not say in October of one year what the 

 cost of anything a year or more later would be, and we ran out of 

 money earlier than anticipated. It has not been built as cheaply as 

 expected because it has been built on a rising market for everything 

 that went into its construction from labor, lumber, food supplies, 

 machinery, and steel to rail and ocean transportation. I believe, 

 however, it can safely be said that no other piece of Government con- 

 struction or private construction done during the war will show a 

 less percentage of increase over a cost that was estimated more than 

 four years ago. 



The men have been well housed and well fed. Their wages have 

 been good and promptly paid ; there has been but one strike, and that 

 was four years ago and was settled by Department of Labor experts 

 fixing the scale of wages. The men have had the benefit of a system 

 of compensation for damages like that in the Reclamation Service and 

 Panama Canal. They have had excellent hospital service, and our 

 camps and towns have been free of typhoid fever and malaria. That 

 the men like the work is testified by the fact that hundreds who 

 " came out " the past two years, attracted by the high wages of war 

 industries, are now anxious to return to Alaska. 



There has been but one setback in the construction, and that was 

 the washing out of 12 miles of tracks along the Nenana River. 

 This is a glacial stream which, when the snows melt, comes down at 

 times with irresistible force. In this instance it abandoned its long 

 accustomed way and cut into a new bed and through trees that had 

 been standing for several generations, tearing out part of the track 

 which had been laid. 



The work of locating and constructing the road has be'en left in the 

 hands of the engineers appointed by yourself. The only instruction 



