Rusty keys would at last be turned in the locks which had kept from Alaskans all the riches and resources of their country, and these men were determined to go on building against odds that they might be better prepared for that freedom of human endeavor when it came.
In these days, when the fires of achievement needed to be encouraged, and not smothered, neither Alan nor Carl Lomen emphasized the menace of gigantic financial interests like that controlled by John Graham--interests fighting to do away with the best friend Alaska ever had, the Biological Survey, and backing with all their power the ruinous legislation to put Alaska in the control of a group of five men that an aggrandizement even more deadly than a suffocating policy of conservation might be more easily accomplished.

Instead, they spread the optimism of men possessed of inextinguishable faith.

The blackest days were gone.

Rifts were breaking in the clouds.

Intelligence was creeping through, like rays of sunshine.