The daily progressive-miner., 1917-02-09
THE REASON WHY
(Continued From Page D

dignity of our town, that nave not materialized; refer the question to the nti-Wickershamites and they will blame our delegate for 1t, but this is all they have been doing in the matter for years past. It doesn't matter who, or how many delegates we have in Congress. if we continue to leave it all to them and do nothing for our selves as a community, we will con tinue to get what we merit-nothing- and likely in time lose some of the government offices now located here. | Farming is not our strong suit, but | we have diversity of natural resour- ces awaiting development. We have | fish, valuable mineral deposits, wPt- empower, timber, marble and etc. in | quantity and quality to support great | population and to contribute enor- mously to the wealth of the world, if i advertised in a manner to induce the | investment of capital to utilize them.
 ketchikan should be the Gloucester of l the Pacific Coast. and will be, if we out dissension to make it the Ameri l can fish market for southeastern AL aska, instead of permitting imaginary
 or real personal grievances to influ- ence us to become so unpatriotic and self-sacrifising as to help to boom a l foreign competitor. Let us consider
 our present situation in connection
 with the fishing industry. The open | ing of the Prince Rupert port to the
 United States fishing fleet came at an opportune time to give it greater weight than it really merits, the great
 CT advance in prices paid the fish
 ermen being, in great part, due to war
 prices as evidenced in the sharp ad- vance in canned and cured fish, as we'll as almost every other product of commerce. We can all do some
 thing toward the building up of our i town and the welfare of our locality,
 but with wealth comes prestige and power, and those of the greatest pos i sessions can, with concerted action,
 accomplish most for us. The voiced
 criticisms against the Strong Hali-
 but Bill" have all lacked the essential elements of valid objection or any
 thing better; the criticisms being
 more of a personal character than against the merits of the bill. As H.
 c. Strong has been the principal cham
 pion of the measure let us briefly l inspect the history of his business ca
 reer as regards Ketchikan interests. He first embarked, in the fall of 1899, 1 in the mercantile business; the fol- 1 lowing year secured the contract for ] carrying the U. s. mail to the various
 outlying points, later, when the com
 munity was beset with high prices and
 most unsatisfactory service in the mat ter of coal, MT. Strong conceived the
 idea of building wharf aud entering
 into the coal business, which he did,
 reducing the price and giving much
 better article and service than We
 had been getting; he next organized the Northland SS. Co.,, his company
 building the freighter Northland and
 later bought the Alki and entered the transportation field between Seattle
 and Southeastern Alaska, with a sub stantial reduction in both freight and
 passenger rates. MT. Strong is bus mess man; these were not philanthropy
 ic, but business policies, and are here stated to show that he has never tried to give the public the worst of it, and 1 those who are opposing the passage
 of the Halibut Bill thru any suspicion | of any scheme of Mir Strong's to work
 a hardship upon the fishermen or best
 interests of Ketchikan, certainly do in l justice to his business judgment and
 likewise to their loyalty to American
 welfare. The question now before us
 is, are we going to dwarf our own town by helping to build up foreign con- petitor, or will we show our loyalty to