The Alaska sourdough., 1911-09-26

thing to say to the secretary, and had approached the group courteously, there is not the slightest doubt that unless he showed indications of dementia, no one would have laid violent hands up on him. Therefore, the unbiased read CT of the Dispatch s communication could hardly have failed to be impress ed with the fact that if there was any thing at the bottom of the feeling the writer manifests, there must have been an exceedingly interesting story, which the author of the communication had strangely failed to tell
 Since then there have been two com munications published in the Ketchi- kan Miner, which threw considerable light on the matter. Both of these were signed, and the author of the first com munication has come to light. None of the communications are written in the best of tempers, but after they have laid on the ice chest for a few days, these appear to be the facts, as one may glean them from the three com munications:
 A meeting was held in Ketchikan be- fore the coming of the secretary, and reception committee was appointed, but, presumably, neither Governor Clark nor Secretary Fisher were ever appraised that such a committee was in existence; that J. R. Heckman, who owns a general merchandise store at Ketchikan, and H. c. Strong, resident of Ketchikan, owner of an ungainly craft which has offered some oposition to the Guggenheim lines, and who has recently converted a barge into a can nery in opposition to the salmon trust, walk ed up to the governor and the cab inet officer, as probably any other cit izen might have done, and talked to them. The reception committee never appeared on the scene, apparently, at any time. That a public meeting was held at which Attorney Cosgrove, "a Democratic warhorse,' as the Dispatch says, and who is the author of one of the communications in the Dispatch, in which he appears to be in sympa thy with the man who wrote the orig inal communication to the Dispatch, and representative of the opposition, in Alaska, was offered the ear of the secretary for the purpose of pouring grievances into it "ad libatum,' but Cosgrove declined From these com munications, there seems to be little ground for doubting that any may who had anything to say might have said 1t at that mass meeting. Further, it appears that whatever soreness there may be in eKtchikan, and the Sour dough does not think that there is much, is due not to the fact that some one who had something to say was prevented from getting the ear of the secretary, but that men who were not on the committee ana not on the SlaTe seized the opportunity of talking to the distinguished visitor, and that the grievance, if there is any, is just the reverse of what it apepars to be.
 It would seem to the Sourdough that any newspaper reader who does not en- joy being lied to, who is not fond of being prejudiced, would naturally be very much disgusted with such an eff fort to mislead him as the original com munication printed in the Dispatch un- doubtedly was.
 In the issue of the Dispatch in which that paper prints all three of the com munications, it comments itself as be- ing "noted locally as a paper which prints the news regardless of cannery magnates, big advertisers or local in fuences. The Sourdough sincerely hopes that it may never be put to the extremity of proving it's independence by an article so groundless, so unjust and so unfair as was this letter in which the Dispatch takes so much