The daily Alaskan., 1908-04-27
ONE TAX OUTRAGE
The HoRvy Eiho Charged Against tho Roadhouss Keeper for Doing the Thing all Mon want Him to do

aziue has touched upon most timely topic io a most convincing way. He sets out on a journey on foot from Fair banks to the mines On Cleary creek and the story particularly appeals 10 the editor Of the Alaskan since he has travelled that same trail many 6 time himself. The writer, in his story, tolls up and up and up to the summit of the difficult divide, the horizon slowly broadening until at the top a mognIf- cent landscape spreads away under bis eye. He fees himself aloIe almost in clouds with the busy mines of Pedro and Gold Stream on the one side and those Of Cleary on the other making their feeble traclngs along the distant creeks like SO many ant hills iu the great sweep ot the picture, But he is not alone. There is a roadhousO near and how 1t appeals to him after the wesrisome climb. Now to quote the magaizius writer;
 "The rosdhouse was large log cabin, in the rear of which was ,he kitchen, where a woman was baking bread. In the front room was rude bar, and few chairs and two or three benches where the weary might sit and partake Of tbeir refreshments. The most con- spilious things in this humble place were the government licenses. They made @ big patch on the bare walls back of the b,r. noticed first lhe name. Martin Danielseu, then read on far ther. fifteen dollars for the privilege of selling tobacco and cigars; just below this on the wall was another license, fifteen dollars for the privilege Of con- du,,ing a restaurant; then there was another license, five hundred dollars for privilege of retailing liquors; and b - meath all this evidence of revenue paid to the federal governn ent was the iu- terual revenue license Of twenty-five dollars, making total of s555, tribute money that this man in his log cabin, twenty miles from an Incorporated town and in a country which but few } ears before was a wilderness, was com DeIled to pay to the United States for the privilege of conducting a wayside inn.
 "To my mind there appears to be something anomalous in these revenue tags and the surroundings. Here was log cabin, rudely constructed, several miles distant from the nearest haOita- tiOu, erected by the roadside and on an elevation commanding one Of the most magnificent views 10 be had in Alaska; where vas, expause Of unGrodden terri tory and great reaches of unexplOred bill and valley, emphasized the feeling o,lioer;y and lack of restraint which comes to every man when he first visits this country; and yet amid all these primitive conditions our great and ben e6ceut government was eIscting quadrupe toll from a citizen for the privilege ot conducting a wayside Inn. It did not seem right. 1t does not seem right now; for that matter any tax upon thrift, Industry or enterprise does not seem right. License law may be neces. sAry in order to provide revenue. The exigencies of business demand things that are not ethical; but I would like to see a license law which would be less burdensoms to the Alaska roadhouse keeper"
 Yes, and so would many others. The idea of the government aning a man for doing the thing that the travel CT in the wilderness blesses him for dO- me. seems monstrous. Perhaps, after all, the liquor license bill of Governor Hozgatt, against which the Alaskan protested some time since IS the better one after all. 1t refuses license to the keeper entirely. Of course everybody knows what the result of