The Cordova daily times., 1916-02-11
POINTS REMEDY FUR ALASKA $
 MANY ILLS

Thomas B. Drayton, of Kern creek, as a part of a propaganda for statehood for Alaska, and is published for what lit is worth:
 At the venture of offending svn5i- .biuues having much official cause to he delicate, if is here recorded that Alaska has one oyershadowing prob lem compared to which the collective Importance of all other present terri torial problems is inconsequeutial and negligible. and that problem is: Shall Alaska be governmcd in the interest
 of Alaska and the republic, or con tinue to be governed in the interest of a coterie of political parasites?
 Every Alaskan realizes this; how be, in our territorial midst most statesmen. publicists and other accou- tired of political harness or having axes to grind employ ladylike mode of expression. fastidious to the point of ambiguity. in referring to the sub
 iect
 Paradoxical as it seems after that 'interrogatory exposition, it is yet true that Alaska is not governed at all. What by an exaggeration of courtesy we call our territorial government is but a long distance administrative ar rangement, by which territorial func- tions are parcelIed out between large number of Washington bureaus, each seemingly intent chiefly upon the creation and maintenance of jobs for persons having claims upon it. but without reference to the needs or interests of Alaska
 Naturally the territory is overrun with useless and idle officials Having no useful duties to perform - certain ly none so important as killing time and drawing their pay - perforce these gentry must do some make-be- lieve work to justify their employment and insure the continuance of their sinecures. In pursuance of which purpose they have developed by de grees into an interlocking overlap ping, ubiquitous, congeries of official busybodies, whose incessant inter meddling has largely defeated all real progress, and seemingly reduced many of our people to a condition of lethar
 gy, a hopelessness. a kind of civic coma, which is wont to express itself
 in the laconic phrase: What's the Iuse?"
 As it is presumably imperative that the Washington government provide incomes for these mwelcome guests. it may safely be said that Alaska
 would gladly, even ioyously, tax her self to provide the largess if the gov ernment in turn would consent to bill
 let them upon some section of the
 republic more able 10 recoup the dis 1 aster their presence entails.
 In 1912 Congress passed an Act ere ating a territorial legislature, and con ferred upon it what may designed as 1 a limited measure of initiative. In
 other words, it may indulge in legis-
 lative play acting it's enactments be- | ing valid or void as approved or dis
 approved by Congress in theory, but | in fact by Washington bureaucrats; a degree of authority substantially tan tamount to that exercised by a con course of private citizens convened in town meeting, with the important difference that the town meeting can point with pride, even with alarm, re- solve and resolute until it is black in the face upon any known subject or upon subjects known only to itself; whereas the Alaska legislature upon turning to the simplest matter of purely local interest, will, ten to one, find itself frustrated with a proviso, exception, reservation, prohibition or joker, adroitly designed to secure the tenure of a federal job.
 Our Organic Act is as ingenious a piece of legislative legerdemain as was ever slipped through Congress by bureaucratic porch climbers or second story artists; and was designed alone for the dual purpose of pacifying the growing discontent of an oppressed people, and concurrently making le noticeable the utter uselessness of
 multitude of utterly useless jobs, W
 Alaskans have not even the poor con