The ACTING CHAIRMAN. To what extent is that growth of timber merchantable or commercial timber?

Mr. JOSLIN. It is good for firewood and practically not much else. Senator NELSON. It is not lumber timber.

Mr. JOSLIN. There is a considerable amount of spruce. If you will look again at that photograph you will see scattered through that birch timber quite a few spruce sprees, which, in some cases, will run as high as 18 inches or 2 feet in diameter. Some is very good saw timber sufficient for local use but not for export.

The ACTING CHAIRMAN. You are not afraid that the destruction of those forests up there will produce floods that will destroy anything at the mouth of the Yukon?

Mr. JOSLIN. No. The great point is to destroy those forests as fast as we can and put in crops that will be worth something.

The ACTING CHAIRMAN. You feel that an agricultural crop is a good deal better for your country than a timber crop?

Mr. JOSLIN. The report of this agricultural experiment station shows that the crop was worth $300 per acre per year, net.

Mr. WICKERSHAM. Whereas the original timber crop would be worth how much?

Mr. JOSLIN. Very little. There might be a thousand cords per acre on that land, but it would be worth nothing except for fuel. It is worth nothing as it stands.

The ACTING CHAIRMAN. We are very sympathetic with that view out in our country.

Mr. JOSLIN. We certainly are in Alaska. We have too much timberland, just as we had in the Eastern States when the pioneers began to clear it to make farms. They had to have logrollings, and burn the timber to get rid of it, and we shall have to continue that process. The statistics show that there is far and away more timberland in the United States than there is any need for, and a great deal of it will have to be cleared in the years to come.

Senator HITCHCOCK. That is a mooted question. I think you will have to avoid that.

Mr. JOSLIN. Yes; I think so myself. I do not think it is wise to touch on it.

Senator NELSON. You do not want to make the Forest Bureau understand that you have much timber there, or they will put you in the reserve.

Mr. JOSLIN. That is very true.

Senator. HITCHCOCK. In the prairie States we do not have any timber; we do not want to see all of the rest of it cut off.

Mr. JOSLIN. No, sir.

Mr. WICKERSHAM. We have very little merchantable timber there. It is right along the streams.

Mr. JOSLIN. Scarcely enough to supply the local use.

Senator HITCHCOCK. Do you mean that is because of quality or size?

Mr. JOSLIN. Both. It is not very heavy timber. I do not want to be understood as expressing myself in regard to all of Alaska. The country has enormous variations in resources and in climate. I am speaking now of Fairbanks district. In the southeastern part of Alaska there is very heavy timber crops as good timber as they have anywhere. But in the interior of Alaska, which is the greatest

area, the timber will probably be sufficient to supply local needs for many years to come with lumber for building houses and for fuel, but it is not a heavily timbered country, and will never be.

Senator NELSON. It is not what we call in our country merchantable timber.

The ACTING CHAIRMAN. Let me inquire now-these farms about the agricultural experiment station, of which you speak, are held by homesteaders?

Mr. JOSLIN. Yes, sir.

The ACTING CHAIRMAN. And those are covered with timber?
Mr. JOSLIN. Timber or bushes.

The ACTING CHAIRMAN. Do they permit them to make homestead entries in that section irrespective of the timber on the lands?

Mr. JOSLIN. Yes, sir; they sometimes indict them for selling timber before they have proved up on the homestead, but the homestead usually covers timbered land.

The ACTING CHAIRMAN. The homesteader is permitted freely to go in and take any land that he thinks he can make a living on.

Senator NELSON. The trouble is in that country that the land is not surveyed before he can prove up his claim, and he has to go to the expense of proving up. We had an appropriation last year of $100,000 for surveys. That was the first that was ever appropriated. Mr. JOSLIN. That is true. Surveys have been going on there for two years, and a very large portion of the area in the vicinity of Fairbanks is now sectionalized.

Senator NELSON. I do not know how much they have done. I know that I went before the Committee on Appropriations and got something for them.

Mr. JOSLIN. Yes, sir. It was a very excellent thing.

Senator HITCHCOCK. Is the homestead law applying to Alaska different in any respect from the homestead law applying to other States?

Mr. JOSLIN. Yes, sir; quite decidedly different. The principal difference is that a homesteader in Alaska is allowed to take up 320 acres instead of 160, which I do not think is wise. I believe others probably would differ with me. I think that 160 acres is a proper

unit.

Senator HITCHCOCK. What does he pay?

Mr. JOSLIN. He pays, I believe, $1.25 an acre if he commutes it, if he lives on it five years, or three years under the new law, he can get it without any cost except the fees of the land office.

Senator HITCHCOCK. Are there any other methods by which agricultural land can be secured except by homestead or commutation of homestead?

Mr. JOSLIN. That is all I recall. There is the soldiers' additional homestead statute. There are, I think, about 30,000 acres of land in the vicinity of Fairbanks taken up.

Senator NELSON. The reason, I might say, for increasing it was that originally it was only 80 acres, and we increased it because the country was mountainous and hilly and with a claim of 320 acres you would not, oftentimes, have more than 80 or 40 acres of good land; the rest would be a mountain range.

Mr. JOSLIN. Very true. The intention and spirit of the increase was excellent. It was undoubtedly designed to encourage men to take up homesteads, and give them larger tracts and greater reward.

Senator NELSON. Let me ask you. Do you say they made surveys up around Fairbanks?

Mr. JOSLIN. Yes, sir.

Senator NELSON. And subdivided it?

Mr. JOSLIN. Yes, sir.

Senator NELSON. Into townships and sections?

Mr. JOSLIN. Into townships and sections and quarter sections. Senator HITCHCOCK. Thirty thousand acres of this has been taken up in the neighborhood of Fairbanks?

Mr. JOSLIN. Yes, sir; the last time I had occasion to examine the matter, which was about two years ago.

Senator NELSON. That must have been within the last two years or within the last year?

Mr. JOSLIN. No, sir; I think in the last three or four years that amount has been taken

up.

Senator HITCHCOCK. What crops besides wheat are they raising, or attempting to raise, on this land?

Mr. JOSLIN. Potatoes and oats are the principal crops-and barley, cabbages, turnips, and carrots.

Mr. WICKERSHAM. All root crops?

Mr. JOSLIN. All root crops; but potatoes, oats, and barley are the staple crops of that north country.

Senator WALSH. While you are on that question-you raise hay, of

course?

Mr. JOSLIN. Oat hay. The oats are cut for hay. They are not thrashed. There is no thrasher in the country. Up above Dawson, in the Yukon country, there is a considerable quantity of oats raised and thrashed. On the Pelly River, near the Yukon here [indicating], more than a thousand miles eastward from Fairbanks, some men there have been farming for 10 years and they have a thrashing machine.

Senator NELSON. On the Pelly River?

Mr. JOSLIN. On the Pelly River, near the Yukon.
Senator NELSON. It is above Dawson?

Mr. JOSLIN. Yes; it is above Dawson, a thousand miles from Fairbanks. They have thrashed from a thousand to fifteen hundred bushels of oats per year there. They sell to the stage line which operates the stages from Whitehorse here [indicating] to Dawson, and they have made very comfortable fortunes, I understand, farming there.

Senator WALSH. While we are on that question, do you raise any kinds of hay at all in the Fairbanks region?

Mr. JOSLIN. Timothy grows. The oats, wheat, and barley are all cut for hay-all that is raised there.

Senator WALSH. To what extent has the live-stock interest been prosecuted?

Mr. JOSLIN. There is not much, except cows for dairy purposes. There is a considerable amount of dairying about Fairbanks. Some dairymen are very prosperous.

Senator WALSH. Is it possible to handle any kind of stock except dairy stock?

Mr. JOSLIN. Oh, yes; hogs are very profitable. In the last two or three years hog raising has become quite an industry at Fairbanks. I could not tell how many hogs are raised there, but there is a very considerable number.

Senator WALSH. What do you feed them?

Mr. JOSLIN. We feed them on carrots, potatoes, etc.
Senator WALSH. The root crops?

Mr. JOSLIN. The root crops. They thrive, and it is very profitable. Unfortunately they got an epidemic among them last season which killed a large proportion of the hogs in the valley.

Senator LIPPITT. What was that, cholera ?

Mr. JOSLIN. No; it was some kind of lung fever which was brought in by some hogs which were shipped in alive.

Senator NELSON. Hog cholera, probably?

Mr. JOSLIN. It was not cholera. It was something similar. Lung fever, I think they called it. The hogs that had been brought in packed in the steamboat were sick when they arrived there. It proved contagious, and destroyed almost all the hogs in the valley.

Senator NELSON. Will you allow me to interrupt you? I wanted to say for the information of Senator Walsh that in a good many of those river bottoms on the low lands there is a kind of a grass-wild red top grows. It makes a pretty fair fodder if it is cut in the right

season.

Mr. JOSLIN. Yes; there are immense quantities of that.

Senator NELSON. It is coarser than the tame red top, but it resembles it somewhat. I took from what I saw of it that if it is cut in season it will make a good fodder. There is lots of that in some localities.

Mr. JOSLIN. It makes excellent fodder. There are unlimited. areas of it. It grows also on the hills and high up on the mountains. I have seen it growing well up on the mountains as high as a man's shoulder. It makes an excellent horse feed. The horses will leave the best timothy hay to eat it when it is properly cured. But it has two disadvantages. It is not so strong a horse food so timothy, and-

Senator NELSON. It is better than straw and not quite as good as hay?

Mr. JOSLIN. The great misfortune about it is that it is not perennial. When it is cut once or twice it does not produce a crop the year following. While it is now used in considerable quantities for horse feed, it is not as good as timothy, barley, or oats hay.

Senator WALSH. That is, it must be allowed to go to seed to perpetuate itself?

Mr. JOSLIN. Yes; I do not know why.

Senator NELSON. You mean the tame red top?

Mr. JOSLIN. No; I am talking of the wild hay. Timothy grows very well. In my yard at Fairbanks four or five years ago we sowed timothy. It grows as high as the fence every year. It is never winterkilled. It is winterkilled on the north side of the house, but it makes a very good crop of timothy, and it is in that flat bottom. land.

Mr. WICKERSHAM. How wide is the valley?

Mr. JOSLIN. It is about 50 miles wide at Fairbanks. It will average maybe 20 to 30 miles in width throughout its whole length. That flat land is not the best land. The best land is the low, rolling hills along the margin of the valley, and there is an immense area of it. The flat lands will produce crops. The manager of that experimental farm proposes very shortly to clear and cultivate some of the

flat and which you see in that photograph for experimental purposes. He believes, and we all believe, because there are other farms on the flat land, that when that land is cleared and plowed and turned up to the sun it will become as light and as productive as the higher lands and probably even more so.

The clearing of farm lands about Fairbanks is going on rapidly. I believe that last year the area of land under cultivation at Fairbanks nearly doubled all that had been cleared and cultivated up to that time. And there is an enthusiasm about it. The yield of those crops is a matter of amazement and surprise to the men themselves who are producing them, because there, as everywhere, it was the supposition that the land was worthless for farm purposes. But either from the fact that the soil is new and has the elements in it that produce growth in great abundance or from the fact that there is during the growing period 24 hours of daylight, one or both must be the cause for the amazing production of that land.

Senator HITCHCOCK. Has the production been sufficient to make any appreciable difference in the shipping in of supplies?

Mr. JOSLIN. Yes; it has stopped the shipping of fresh cabbage. They raise all they use. In the matter of turnips they raise all they use. Of potatoes they are producing about half the quantity they use. In two years more there will probably be no more shipped in. In the matter of hay they have reduced the quantity shipped in some, but not a great deal. Lettuce and tomatoes are all produced locally. Tomatoes are grown largely in hothouses, although they have been ripened outdoors.

Senator HITCHCOCK. You are speaking of the neighborhood of Fairbanks.

Mr. JOSLIN. I am speaking of the neighborhood of Fairbanks. It is undoubtedly a grain-producing country and will produce grain as good as any. It will not be excelled by Maine or Minnesota, or the Dakotas, or any portion of the northern part of this country. It is a surprise. Whenever I have observed those crops growing their prolificness has been a source of wonder. It undoubtedly is due somewhat to the fact that during the whole of the growing season there is no darkness. It is all daylight. From May to the end of August you could read a paper at midnight. Another thing is that those crops are of most excellent quality. Vegetables, such as cabbage, turnips, tomatoes, radishes, and lettuce, are vastly superior to anything we have in the States.

Mr. WICKERSHAM. And celery.

Mr. JOSLIN. And celery and things of that nature. In the hills on both sides of that valley there are mines. The whole valley from head to mouth is gold-bearing. The Geological Survey reported nearly 15 years ago that an examination of the streams flowing into the Tanana from the north all showed evidence of gold. In that respect I want to speak a little in reference to the Senator's question yesterday as to the permanency of placer mining as an industry. In California they discovered gold, as you know, in 1848. That is above 60 years ago. There was a bonanza period when the placer production reached as high as $85,000,000 a year. But the production in California last year, 1912, was about $20,000,000. It has been producing for 60 years.