The Alaska daily empire., 1914-08-06
pRYNEss OF slTKA
 THEME FOR DISCUSSION

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 Writing in the Seattle Times, J. J Underwood, has the following com ment to make on the recent voting out of the saloon in sitka:
 "sltka has gone dry by twenty-five votes"
 This is the brief message flashed this morning from the former capital of Alaska. By many, it is regarded as the most amazing piece of news that ever came out of the Northern Territory.
 Messages telling of bursting noun tains, of sudden glacier movements of islands rising from boiling waters while others sank beneath the depths of wonderful mineral developments, of marvellous engineering feats in rail road building, of wonderful placer gold strikes such as Nome and the Klondike, and of many other things of more or less unbelievable character have come out of the North from time to time and have been accepted with. out doubt. But the story that num- Der of residents have voluntarily vot' ed to abolish the liquor business in the Territory is one that stretches the faith of the most credulous of Alas kans.
 And Sitka, of all places! That the town founded by Governor Baranof, one of the hardest and fastest livers ever known in the civilized history of the North, has gone dry is almost unbelievable. Sitka is the home of the Alaskan pioneer. It is the place to which all the old.timers of the North, who have spent their best years in fighting their way across the mountain ranges and into the inac- cessible places are sent to spend their declining and indigent years. That these men, who have tramped through out the length and breadth of the Territory, who have been ever in the vanguard of every stampede, who have watched towns spring up in a night and decline in a day, should live to witness the spectacle of number of free.born citizens voluntarily agree ing to wipe out the saloon is but an. other indication that "the world do moye." And still more amazing is the fact that there is strong sus' picion in the minds of many that some of the same old pioneers were ranked amongst the opponents of the propo' sition.
 The result of the Sitka vote leaves the saloon keepers and many of the residents in a quandary. The saloon keepers, in the absence of the judge, are still doing business, and in fear that the future supply might be cut off, the residents of Sitka who favored "wet" town are exercising thrift and foresight by laying in supply against the parched and thirsty days that are yet to be. The resorts will be kept open until such time as Judge Jennings passes on the vote.
 In the Pioneers Home there are thirty-one boarders. whose average length of residence in the Territory is more than twenty years. Among them are some who stampeded to the Cassiar in 1883 and others who were In on the placer discoveries at Juneau and in the Silver Bow Basin in 1887 Practically all of them were on the Yukon at Forty Mile and Circle City before George Carmack and Skookum Jim made the discovery on the Klon dike River that startled the world and attracted horde of nearly 100000 gold hunters from all parts of the world to the North.
 The institution is under the super vision of A. G. Shoup, who went tC Alaska when Grover Cleveland wal President, and for whose father shoup's Bay and shoup's Glacier were named. Shoup, who is fairly wei padded with the worlds goods. re ceiyes no compensation for his ser vices.