'Congress would never pass such a law,' one of the other men protested, and Hoxey corrected him: 'Congress will pass any law dealing with Alaska that the Western states agree to. Your problem, gentlemen, is to decide what within reason you want.'
'We'll begin with the law I just proposed,' Ross said, 'but we will not present it to Congress in that form.'
'What form do you suggest?' the original protester asked with a touch of sarcasm.
'Patriotism, Sam. Our law will forbid ships of any other nation to conduct business directly with Alaska. They must transship all their goods through an American port, which will naturally be Seattle.'
'That makes sense,' Hoxey cried. 'It's reasonable. It's easy to understand. And it is, as Mr. Ross said, patriotic.'
'The advantage ..."Ross began, then stopped to correct himself. 'There are really several advantages. Our local stevedores will get paid for unloading the foreign ship and then paid again for loading the goods into our ships. And since cheap competition will be eliminated, our merchants can pretty much establish their own prices. It's expensive to run ships into those cold, island-strewn waters.' He paused, looked at each of the men, and asked: 'Have you any idea how many ships are lost each year in Alaskan waters?' And when they replied 'No,' he ticked off the disastrous record, going back to the days when Russia owned the area, losing several ships a year on reefs and hidden rocks: 'And the Americans haven't done a lot better. Our company has already lost two.'
'Sounds like poor captains and faulty navigation,' one of the men suggested, but Ross rejected that charge: 'More like sudden storms, wild seas and submerged rocks that haven't been properly charted,' and he told them of the ferocious wind that could come roaring out of Canada down Taku Inlet, rattling the roof of the cannery and placing any fishing boat in jeopardy: 'Alaska is no place for weaklings. Mining gold was difficult. Mining salmon requires just as much daring. Any profit we make from Alaskan waters, we earn.'
'But how can we protect your access to the salmon?' asked a financier whom Ross had approached for funds to cover the rapid development of the canneries he was proposing.
'Tom, fetch that model of Taku Inlet,' and when Tom returned from the office with it, Ross said: 'Explain to the men how this trap will work.' But before Tom could begin, Ross said: 'Gentlemen, you are to visualize traps like this in every major salmon stream. Properly administered, they will control the entire production of salmon.'
'This isn't a design, or a plan,' Tom began. 'It shows a real cannery. Totem on Taku Inlet coming out of Canada, where a little river called the Pleiades comes in. Our salmon breed in this little lake up here, and in a hundred others along the Taku River system, most of them in Canada. Up and down Taku Inlet salmon move by the million.
So here at this vantage point we float this trap. Costs very little to build, and then we line out these grabbers to steer the fish in. Jiggers we call them, and when they're in place every salmon coming up Taku Inlet becomes a possibility for our cannery here.'
It was a beautiful, easy-to-control system as Tom explained it, but one of the more experienced men listening to the details was quick to spot an important problem:
'But what about Canada? If the Taku salmon breed mostly in their waters? Won't they raise hell about an efficient trap like this intercepting fish headed for their river system?'
'Tom,' Mr. Ross directed, 'fetch that big map of the area,' and when it was unfolded the men were shown the amazing structure of the area they were discussing: 'Here's Juneau, the new capital of Alaska. And a score of miles over here is Canada. You could ride the distance in half a day with a good horse. Except for one thing. Look closely, gentlemen. These mountains along the border are more than eight thousand feet high, rising from sea level in that short distance. And on our side, this entire area is one vast ice field. If you set out on foot to walk from Juneau to Canada, you'd be on a glacier all the way, with crevasses and monstrous uprisings of ice, and it might take you three weeks, if you were lucky enough to get through alive.'
While the men studied the forbidding terrain, he dismissed with a wave of his hand all of Canada east of the salmon stations: 'Wilderness. Towering mountains. Ice fields.
Wild rivers. Inaccessible. Not one settler in a hundred square miles. Not one cannery anywhere and none likely to exist for a hundred years.'
Again the men studied the map, that vast expanse of nothingness on the Canadian side, after which Ross summarized: 'In building our system of canneries and traps, we can ignore Canada. For our purposes, it doesn't exist.' And he turned to more pressing matters: 'Hoxey, it's up to you to prevent the government of Alaska, such as it is, from passing any laws that might restrict our access to the salmon. No taxes. No impositions. No inspectors snooping around our canneries. And above all, no legislation governing the operation of traps.'
When Hoxey said that that was how he understood his commission, Ross said: 'Good.
Now execute it,' and to the businessmen he said: 'Gentlemen, in situations like this one at Taku Inlet and Alaska has hundreds as good or better we have a gold mine, a living, swimming gold mine, but we must harvest it with care. Maintain quality.
Penetrate new markets. Make salmon the rich man's delight, the poor man's sustenance.
Can we do it, Tom?'
'If those two professors can perfect the Iron Chink, the sky's the limit.'
'And what is this Iron Chink?' one of the prospective investors asked, and Ross said simply: 'A secret which must not go beyond this room. But two men at the university are about to perfect a machine which will make the use of Chinese labor no longer necessary."
'What does it do?'
'An endless supply of salmon moves down the conveyor and automatically the machine cuts off the head and tail, then sizes the salmon and guts it beautifully. Without the help of one damned Chinaman, the fish is prepared for canning, and another conies along in nine seconds.'
'Does such a machine exist?'
'Not for this canning season. But sure as the sun rises in the east, by 1905, farewell to those Chinamen and hello to profits you haven't even dreamed about.'
But then came a sharp protest from one of the men who had been paying special attention to the Taku model: 'Hey, wait a minute! If we throw those weirs clear across the inlet to trap our fish, how are the baby salmon going to get out of the lake when they want to head for the ocean?'
Tom slapped himself on the forehead: 'I always forget to explain the most important things. The movable weirs are in position only during the part of the year when we're catching mature salmon coming upstream. When the young ones come down from the lake, they find the inlet open right to the sea.'
Hoxey left Seattle on Tuesday morning, a complete strategy for the control of Alaska in his satchel. According to the plan devised principally by Mr. Ross, the fabulous riches of the salmon run could be garnered by his and the other companies without involving more than a handful of Alaskan citizens: 'All the lumber for the new canneries is milled here in Seattle and the machinery is assembled here too. Then it sails north in our ships. They're installed by the Seattle workmen who sail with them.
The fish are caught in traps built here in the city and placed in position by our men. No more arguments with Tlingit fishermen, or white ones, either. The cans are made here, packed flat, and opened up at the cannery. No more tinsmiths. And best of all, that big bunkhouse filled with Ah Ting and his outfit, it will be filled with machines that'll work faster than that gang ever could and double our working area without adding another building.'
He smiled at Hoxey, then said: 'And when the cans are sealed and labeled, they come back here in our ships. And we send them throughout America and the rest of the world.'
IN THE TWO DAYS FOLLOWING HOXEY'S DEPARTURE, TOM drafted plans for the coming season at the R&R headquarters, and whenever he looked at the map in Mr. Ross's office and saw the red stars indicting where future canneries were to be established, he had a sinking feeling which he could share with
no one:
I'm never to get back to Seattle! I'm to spend my life moving from one Taku Inlet to the next, always building some new plant, and he could visualize the locations:
Some remote inlet. No town within fifty miles. No wives. No children. Just traps catching salmon and the Iron Chink processing them.
But then he reflected on the advantages of working with a man like Malcolm Ross, who seemed unquestionably the most effective human being he had ever known: He's not warm and eager like Missy Peckham, who was the most admirable person he had been privileged to watch, but he does have vision and he does get things done. He was content to keep his wagon hitched to Mr. Ross, and as he reviewed the decisions of the past few days, he found that he had no reason to oppose any of Ross's plans for Alaska. Worthy things were to be done and the interests of both R&R and Seattle were to be protected.
It simply did not occur to Tom to question the morality of Seattle's intention to keep Alaska in a kind of serfdom, without political power or the right of any self-determination.
He ignored the fact that if the Ross-Hoxey plans were established in law, Alaska would pay some fifty percent more for any goods it imported through Seattle than the similar territory of Hawaii would pay for its freight through San Francisco.
Nor did he question the design that would leave Alaska powerless to pass any regional law protecting its salmon, or its trees, or its mines, or even its citizens. He did not at this time know the word fiefdom, but the concept would not have worried him: Mr. Ross has a clear vision of how Alaska should be developed, and no one I've met in Juneau has a clue as to what should be done.
No sooner did he reach this conclusion than he felt a twinge of doubt: Maybe Sam Bigears on the other side of the Pleiades, maybe he has a vision of how he and his Tlingits ought to live. And then he thought of Nancy Bigears facing the grizzly bear and talking him down: Maybe she knows, too, and when he visualized Nancy, he experienced a pang of remorse, for she and her father were aspects of Alaska that he could not dismiss.
However, his attention after work was diverted to the study of Mrs. Ross, whose behavior perplexed him. She was, on the one hand, a social leader in Seattle society, the wife of one of the city's richest men and obviously a woman of power. She could be imperious, as a social leader sometimes had to be, and she could look down her nose with the best of them, but even when she was being dictatorial, which she was several times in his presence, she displayed a roguish sense of humor, which bubbled into her eyes and often caused her to laugh quietly at either herself or at the inadvertent pomposities of her husband.
At the end of his first week sharing the intimacies of the Ross home, Tom blurted out at the dinner table: 'You are two of the nicest people I've ever met.'
'Why, that's very kind of you, Tom. Surely, though, you've met many kind people in all your travels,' and Mrs. Ross turned in her chair to study him.
'Well, I've met lots of nice people. Missy Peckham, who was like a mother to me, was about as good as a person could be. And I knew a goldminer on the Yukon. I'd go anywhere with him. But 'What are you trying to say?'
'Just that these were good people, maybe the very best, but things never seemed to work out for them.'
'How do you mean?' It was obvious that Mrs. Ross was sincerely interested in his perceptions.
'Well, for one thing they never met the right person to marry. And for another, whatever they tried seemed to fail.' He hesitated, then came to his significant point: 'You're the first people in my life where you're both ...' He did not know how to finish the contrast between the failures he had known and this pair of well-adjusted, happy people. 'I guess what I mean is, I've known some wonderful people, but they were never married to each other.' With this confession he looked down at his plate.
Mrs. Ross cherished such moments of honest revelation; her life had been enriched by them and she had no intention of allowing this conversation to end on such a note:
'You mean to say, Tom Venn, that you've never before seen a happily married couple?'
'I never have.'
'What do you think makes us so different?'
'Well, you both have power, a lot of it, but you don't abuse it.'
'That's a wonderful compliment, Tom. I have to work very hard to keep Malcolm here from abusing the power he commands.' She winked at her husband. 'And he keeps me from being stuffy.'
Mr. Ross coughed and said: 'There's never been any need for that. Would you like to know why?' and Tom said 'Yes,' nodding eagerly.
'Well, son,' said Mr. Ross, 'Mrs. Ross is no ordinary woman. In the early 1860s when Seattle was just beginning, it was filled with adventurous men like my father who had come here after being kicked out of Scotland. Lots of such men and no women.
So a far-seeing man named Mercer had this bright idea. He'd go to Washington to seek the government's help in financing a ship, then go to New England, which was suffering heavy losses of men in the Civil War, and invite several hundred young women who might otherwise find no husbands to sail to jobs in Seattle where lonely men abounded.
The newspapers of the time gave his expedition such great publicity that when he reached Boston, he found scores of women eager to try their luck out west. A girl named Lydia Dart working in a factory was especially eager to escape from that drudgery.
'Mercer did succeed in convincing hundreds of young women to undertake this adventure, and found much moral support for his plan but had difficulty getting funds for the ship. He finally found a willing financier who agreed to back the venture and provide passage for five hundred passengers at a minimal fee. Well, everything was working fine. Looked like a perfect operation.' He stopped, smiled at his wife, and seemed hesitant to continue.
'What happened?' Tom asked.
'Some evil-minded newspaper reporters, they were bastards, really, they started the rumor that Mr. Mercer ran a chain of whorehouses on the West Coast, and that when the girls reached Seattle, he was going to shove them into these brothels. A great scandal exploded. Tears. Recriminations. Fathers and brothers locking young women in their rooms to keep them from sailing. Before Mercer could answer these nasty accusations, more than two-thirds of his potential travelers had changed their minds and refused to reconsider.
'In January 1866 the ship sailed with only a hundred passengers, and of those, fewer than thirty were young unmarried women. Satisfied that Mr. Mercer was honest, they stayed with him, suffered the Victorian scorn of their neighbors, and sailed around the Horn of South America to make their homes in the Northwest. Lydia Dart became their leader. Watched after them. Fended off reporters seeking to create more scandalous stories. And sort of mothered the younger girls when they reached Seattle.'
'What happened to them then?'
'They became the soul of the city. These were refined, educated women who had come to the frontier. Many of them became teachers, and within the year they were married to the best young men of Seattle. One, who never married, opened the city's first public school. All of them represented the very best of this city, and four of them are alive today, the grand old ladies of Seattle.'
'How was Mrs. Ross connected with them?'
'Aha! The young woman Lydia Dart was the last to marry. She wanted to study the field, and in the end she chose a promising young lawyer named Henderson. And their first child is the gracious lady with whom you're dining tonight.'
A huge smile spread across his face as Tom looked at Mrs. Ross and said: 'Then you're the daughter of one of those young women?'
'The Mercer Girls they're known as in Seattle history. Yes, I'm the daughter of one of them, and a finer group of women never hit a Western city.'
'If you had known Lydia Dart Henderson,' Mr. Ross said, 'you'd understand why my wife could never be pompous or lacking in a sense of humor. Tell him about the letter she wrote to the Boston newspaper.'
Mrs. Ross laughed at the outrageous thing her mother had done, but in relating the incident she obviously took delight in it: 'About ten
years after the Mercer Girls had descended on Seattle, my mother convened a meeting of them. I remember it well, I was about seven years old, and here came these two dozen women, wives of doctors and lawyers and businessmen, and I listened to their stories. Not a bad marriage in the lot. And that night my mother posted her letter to the newspaper in Boston which had been foremost in creating the scandal about the houses of prostitution.'
'What did the letter say?' Tom asked, and Mr. Ross pointed to the wall behind Tom's head where a framed piece of newsprint held a place of honor. Indicating that Tom should take it down, Ross said: 'You'll find it amusing. I did when I first saw it.'
The editors of this journal have recently received an interesting correspondence from one Lydia Dart, formerly of this city, who ventured out to Seattle in 1866.
We thought our readers might find it instructive.
To the Editor:
Last night twenty-five young women who braved public censure to emigrate to Seattle as the Mercer Girls celebrated the tenth anniversary of their adventure. Twenty-four of us are married to the civic leaders of the community and we have nearly ninety children among us. Lizzie Ordway chose not to marry, and she heads the biggest school in the city. All of us own our own homes and all our children of school age are doing quite well. Thirteen of our husbands either are or have been elected officials of our beautiful city.
We invite twenty-five of the young women who refused to come with us in 1866 to meet and send us a letter describing what they have been doing in the meantime.
Lydia Dart Henderson 'That's some letter!' Tom said as he rehung the document, and Mr. Ross said: 'My mother-in-law kept writing letters like that till she died. Much of what's good about this city grew out of her Mercer Girls.'
'Somebody ought to organize another ship like that for the men in Alaska,' Tom suggested.
'And they could use a couple of Lydia Darts in Juneau right now.' Mrs. Ross smiled and said: 'On Friday afternoon, Tom, you'll meet the newest Lydia Dart, except that she's added Ross to her name.'