The Chitina leader. [volume] (Chitina, Alaska) 1910-1928, 1912-03-01
NEWSY
CAPITOL
Letter

| WASHINGTON, Feb. 2s.-Con-
gresham Suffers seal bill, which
provides for the killing and market
ing by the government of surplus
| bachelor seals, passed the House
few days ago after a somewhat bit
ter quarrel among the Democratic
members, some Of whom tried to
force a closed season for period Of
i FIVE years. Last year the govern
| ment's profit from the sealing indus
| try in Alaska amounted to $3S5,00".
Former Senator John L. Wilson,
head of the Pacific coast delegation,
has since invented at least one thou
sand perfectly good reasons why
about IS per cent of this money
should be turned into the Alaska
fund and expended in construction
of roads and trails. Senator Wilson,
, the Alaska delegate, and others in
terested in Alaska, will endeavor to
have an amendment made to the
| bill when it comes before the Senate
committee. The amendment will
provide that the profit derived from
| the sealing industry be expended in
| Alaska.
With strong probability of the
continued till about the middle of
| August, all of the solons assembled
here are playing politics for all the
game is worth. Many of them have
engaged extra clerks and the mails
are congested with copies of the
Congressional Record, resolutions,
committee debates and other govern
ment documents, which are being
mailed under the ranking privilege
to their multitudinous constituents.
Both the Democrats and Republicans
| have plethora of candidates for
President. The streets and hotel
| Hobbies are crowded with dark
horses, but both parties are woefully
lacking in white hope. Headquar-
ters have been established here TO;
Roosevelt, Taft, LaFollette, Wood
row W;'son, Champ Clark, and any
number of other candidates Nobody
knows exactly where Roosevelt now
figures on getting enough votes in
| the Republican nominating conven J..
ton to make him the standard bear
er of the party.
for vice-president.
Clifford Pinchot looks very much
worried and appears to have aged
ten years in the last few months. 1t
is thought that he sees himself rid
ing to a certain fall. The former
chief forester is sitting ON the horns
of dilemma. For some time he
was most ardent advocate of La
Toilette. Then the Big Voice and
inventor of the short and ugly word
appeared in the offing, and Pinchot
went back to his first love. Pinchot,
when campaigning for LaFollette,
did not know that Roosevelt was a
probable candidate, and now since
he has deserted LaFollette, the lat
ter's supporters are bitterly de-
nouncing the disciple of reformation
and the bachelor father of our chill
dren's children for having used their
principal as a come on in a conf
oence game.
There does not appear to be any
very great rush for the job of vice.
president. A few of the Southern
democrats have started an embryo
campaign for General Sherwood, the
| father of the old soldiers pension
bill. The South is going to play a
pretty strong part in the next DEM
ocratic convention. Oscar Under
wood and Champ Clark are botn
making strong fight for the nomi-
| nation. Clark's defeat of Senator
Cores forces in Oklahoma, engineer
ed by Congressman Scott Ferris,
which resulted in Clark capturing
most of the delegates, somewhat STAR
tiled the other candidates. Ferris is
much stronger man than was gen.
orally supposed, and it is not i'm
probable that he will succeed Gore in
the Senate.
Bishop P. T. Rowe, head of the
Episcopal Diocese of Alaska, left
here recently for his favorite stamp
ing ground in the North. He will
go down the Yukon to the Koyukuk,
| thence up the Koyukuk, across a d.
vide and down the Colville River to
the Arctic Ocean. Before the terri
torial committee. the Bishop COM
planned bitterly-and justly-that
the only time the United States gov
eminent had done anything for the
Indians in the North was when they
| brought lot of alien savages from
British Columbia and established