Thinking About Harriman, JP Morgan, Alaska, And Siberia

In yesterday's post, I mentioned the puzzle of the 1899 Harriman Alaska Expedition, in which the rail magnate Edward Harriman sponsored a major scientific investigation of Alaska's coast. Nobody has so far been able to explain just why he did this -- the suggestion in yesterday's Wikipedia link was that his doctor said he needed a break. But Alice Roosevelt Longworth is said to have described Harriman as "a little brown man who never seemed to play", so it would be in character for him to turn for what others might seem to be a vacation into just an opportunity for a different sort of work.

Pierpont Morgan, a contemporary of Harriman and an equivalent figure, took an interest in Alaska at roughly the same time. The Kennicott [correct original spelling] copper deposit was discovered in July 1899, and by 1906, in response to the copper discovery as well as coal deposits not far away in south central Alaska,

the "Alaska Syndicate," was formed in 1906 by J. P. Morgan and Simon Guggenheim. The Syndicate purchased the Kennicott-Bonanza copper mine and had majority control of the Alaskan steamship and rail transportation. The syndicate also was in charge of a large part of the salmon industry.

The Alaska Syndicate faced intense scrutiny from Alaskans in favor of increased autonomy over their own affairs. The Syndicate, which divided its shares equally amongst M. Guggenheim & Sons and J.P. Morgan & Co., continued to buy up hundreds of thousands of acres of wilderness, which gave rise to the notion that Alaska was "First a Colony of Russia, then a colony of Guggenmorgan". Forester and conservationist Gifford Pinchot led the charge against the Alaska Syndicate and the so-called "Morganheims" and their supporter in Washington, Secretary of the Interior Richard Ballinger.

However, at the same time, Theodore Roosevelt sided with the Foster-Pinchot faction, and also in 1906, he closed Alaska public land to coal mining, which in light of extensive coal deposits there, was and continues to be a severe limiting factor in the territory and state's economic development. Although the Morgan-Guggenheim Syndicate built a railroad that did extract copper ore from the Kennecott mine, they expected that the route would become a major artery from the coast to the Alaska interior as a result of more extensive development.

When this did not take place, they attempted to sell the railroad to the US government. The failure to accomplish this was a reflection of Morgan's decline in his later years, overshadowed by the loss of the Titanic not long before his death. The Kennecott Alaska copper mine was extremely profitable, especially since its most productive period corresponded with the need for copper during World War I. However, the deposit was exhausted by the time of the Great Depression, and anti-development policies in Alaska have effectively limited equivalent industry in much of the state. The abandoned mine facilities are now a national park, something of a commentary on the overall circumstances.

Even before Roosevelt's closing of the Alaska coal leases in 1906, his Justice Department had opposed both Harriman's and Morgan's rail management via lawsuits in 1904. My own view has come to regard Harriman's 1899 Alaska expedition as a fairly thorough investigation of not just the Alaska geography, but its political climate as well, and what sort of environment they might be for his business ventures. As yesterday's Wikipedia link suggests, some people at the time speculated that not only might he have intended a railroad to Alaska, but beyond that a rail connection to Siberia over the Bering Strait. (So far, there have been continuing proposals for a Bering Strait rail tunnel, but there has never been even an overland rail link to Alaska from the rest of North America).

I can't avoid thinking that if Harriman's Alaska expedition was a testing of the waters for any such scheme, his completely correct conclusion must have been that the time wasn't right, especially from a political point of view. Indeed, if the Morgan-Guggenheim Syndicate made a profit from the copper mine, the money they invested in the railroad they built to reach it would be an indication that their actual expectations for Alaska's economic potential were much greater, but they couldn't be supported in the political environment.

Thus Harriman's call as of the turn of the 20th century was correct; Morgan's wasn't. If Harriman saw the possibility of developing far eastern Siberia via a rail connection to Alaska, though, the idea may well have had merit over the very long run -- but politics would need to change in both the US and Russia. Undersea rail tunnels over distances like the Bering Strait have by now proven technically and economically feasible; the Seikan Tunnel in Japan and the Channel Tunnel are about half the length of a possible Bering Sea tunnel, but such a project is now a proven concept. The issue continues to be the political environment.

This is one reason I don't rule out the hypothetical maps of a future Russia that show eastern Siberia "ceded to US". If Antony Blinken and the inflencers around him see money in the whole prospect, it could happen.