The Alaska citizen., 1916-12-25

= GevllInay- care Alaska, beloved of fife tion writers, is as dead as the Tar Flat and Roaring Camp familiar to the last generation of readers. Alaska voted dry, Alaska, the place where, according to popular belief ably seconded by the "moviea," ," all men had hair on their chest and gulped their 'hootch" neat. paying for it with fistfuls of gold dust; Alaska, where business consisted of finding new Klondikes and pleasure meant squandering their wealth in night; of all places Alaska turned against the Demon Rum, ticking the malamutes onto John Barleycorn and chasing him off the lot. Shades of Soapy Smith and Swiftwater Bill,
 Why, don't you remember this? If you don't you have read something like it;
 Tt was quiet night at the ri wolf. At the bar, which ranged along one side of the large chinked log room, leaned half dozen men, two of whom were discussing the rela- tive merits of spruce tea and lime juice as remedies for scurvy. Come up, you all, and drink Come up you unburied dead, an name your poison. Come up, everybody This is my night and I'm going to ride it. Tomorrow I'm 30 and then I'll be an old man. Surge along, you all, surge along and name it. This is my night, and it ain't night that comes frequent. Surge up, you Siwashes and salmon eaters. I'm the mangy old he-wolf. Listen to me howl"
 There Was Money In 1t.
 Fortunes have been made selling that line of talk to magazine editors. All of us who love action stories, and most all of Us do, have be- lieved for years that such as that was Alaska.
 And after we had all been care fully educated to believe in that Alaska pins on white ribbon, takes the pledge and restocks all the ri volis and Nuggets and Klondike bars with grape juice and chocolate ice cream sodas,
 We know this will be shock to Clauy believers in the Wild Vest. It must have been a shock to them when the famous Barbary Coast of San Francisco reformed and when Seattle converted the joints on Wash ington and King streets, where Skoo- kum Jim and Sviftwater and many another new made millionaire gloued and drank deep, into pool parlols and soft drink saloons
 But some thoughtful obaeIvers who have paid a little attention to Al aska saw the change coming years ago. Even before they held a worlds fair at Seattle in 1909, to celebrate the discovery of gold on the Klon dike ten years before, the frontier days of Alaska were coming to an end. Big Business had discovered Alaska. Railroads were being built, and more have followed Huge gold dredges began to work the Nome sanda. Vast fortunes in copper were discovered. but copper is not mined with a sluice box that a man can knock together on the spot, and the development of these new riches brought armies of labo1ing men and costly machinery. Powerful com panies took over the great fisheries
 Towns and cities grew up and or ganized chambers of commerce, and the Panama Valley got into friendly rivalry with the southeastern sec tion over the size of the rutabagas and cabbages that could be pro- duced from the fields. Why, federal school teachers say, even out on the lonely Diomedes and on the snowy deserts above the Arctic Cir cle the traveller will find the simple