The Nome daily nugget., 1913-12-26

There Is a perplexing state Of affairs in Washington just now as regards the future government of Alaska See r,ctors" to run the territory somehow. we presume. after the manner of d railroad or beef trust In view of the unquestioned bad odor that some O: the trusts are in at present this iGea of governing the territory after the manner of the big corpora tions seems little surprising coming. as it does. from cabinet officer who is presumed not to favor the trusts. But then the board of directors of Alaskl might not be just like the board of directors of the present criminal trusts. One thing Is very certain. the hoard of directors of Alaska would be political board and most probably would he composed of men having ab- solutely no interests in the territory. or of men having far to great inter ests" in the territory.
 Without of course being cognizant ot the complete plans of the secretary of the interior and of the manner in hich he proposes to work this board of directors we cannot crit.cise it too st verely. But on the face of 1t 1t does not sound good. Good for Alaska, that Is.
 In this we seem 10 he in agreement with two men who have consistently e> inced an interest in the territory and W who have unquestionably looked into Secretary Lanes plan. These two men gre Senators Pittman and Poindexter. They have at once come out to flat fc oted statement in which they de- clare that they are "unalterably op- ),, sed to any commission or director att form of management for the ter. ritory."
 This opposition from two men who know a grat deal more about Alaska th,n does the secretary of the interior reems to brand the scheme If the cabinet officer as falacious. More over it would seem to be sufficient to block any legislation tending to put the secretary's plan in operation. On the whole Alaska seems to need change of government of some sort fer the present state of affairs is mere pitiful traversity on republican gov ernment
 IL is contended that distances are SO great in Alaska and that the pop ulation is so small in comparison with the size of the territory and. by soma even, that there are not men in AL aska available for the important gov crnment offices. and. that all of this | is q reason why the territory should b. governed more like q royal province ! than a territory of free and inde- pendant republic. This may be good res soning and we are not questioning it in the slightest degree. Only we have vague memories of thirteen col O, les which were widely seperated as regards distance and facility of travel anG communication: that were sparse ly settled and as little developed as is Alaska. These thirteen colonies be- came tired of being royal provinces governed by men sent out from Eng land because there were no men avail able in the colonies for the important government offices. These colonies lo,.ged for the right of man to gov- ern himself in his own lands. and, in spite of the lack of communication and of the small population and the great distance from the capital of London | they decided to do away with the
 governors and officers that did not be-
 long to the land and to run their
 country themselves. They did moi l propose a commission or board oi directors. nor did they believe that it was necessary to send abroad to find men of sufficient calaber to i'll the offices of the new states. They beiiev. cd in self government and they took a chance at finding among themselves
 men able to manage their affairs
 Whether they succeeded or not is evi- denced by a casual glance at the de. velopment of the United States from IT'S to date. l No. you're not going to die. It'f