The Alaska daily empire., 1918-08-30
The Self-Supporting Reindeer.
Louisville Courier-Journal.)

Louisville Courier-Journal)
 John c. Murphy sends to the Courier Journal from his home in Alaska copy of the Alaska Daily Cltlzen in which he discusses the reindeer as source Of na tional wealth
 The reindeer MT. Murphy tells the reader finds its fodder summer winter It lives upon lichens and moss willow twigs. It will eat if other food is not in sight, but it prefers food which no other animal wants and for which there is no market and upon which there is price.
 The hog is machine which transforms market able commodities into pork The reindeer transfers unmarketabe commodities into reindeer. When the cost of feed is considered good deal may be said in behalf of the reindeer. Mr. Murphy in saying that good deal part of it, that the importation of 12S0 reindeer into Alaska in 1902 has resulted in heard of nearly 0,O00 and that natives are get ting annual income of nearly $5OO.OOO from their ownership of about half of the herd. AS invest ment the introduction of reindeer in Alaska has been profitable.
 The Federal Government gives reindeer to tives who prove capable of handling them and in creasing them. They in turn intrust to other Zap prentices' small herds which increased while the apprentice is proving his qualities breeder. Lapp herders train the natives. The animals are increas- ing so fast that MT. Murphy foresees the day when Alaska will be one of the greatest meat supply mar kets in the world"
 The reindeer is also worthy of Consideration as motive power Here in the just torrid, although nominally temperate, zone, We are making choice between motor vehicles consuming war-priced gaso- line and tires In Alaska the price is between dogs which must be fed dog its equivalent, and reindeer, which may be driven all day, requiring no beaten road" and turned loose at night to eat enough food valueless for other purposes with energy for the days true joyride. It is as if you could driven electric" to your hearts content and find it full of juice next morning without cent of expense attached to its means of recovering its expended energy
 And according to its weight the reindeer will furnish as much good eating any beef. If you never have eaten fresh juicy two-nch venison steak thrown into big, red-hot frying pan and broed in its own fat-well you simply have missed of the good eats of lfe.'
 The reindeer from the point of view of the eco nomical American is desirable surely An automo- bile cannot be cut into fresh juicy two-inch steaks and there Is popular prejudice against serving horse mule steak. When any kind of motive pow CT plays out in this country it it almost wholly loss The fertilizer factory may give you $5 for a horse. Your worn-out automobile is not as easily sold.
 Alaska will have. long, Mir Murphy says, an
 income of s15O, 900 OOO a year from reindeer There
 is enough lichen and feed 20, ,OOO, 900 rein deer and if the war lasts long enough Alaska will be the butcher shop of the world.
 AS Mir Murphy is not proposing to sell shares of stock in reindeer breeding plant his opinion is nc doubt dispassonate. Undoubtedly meat animals which need not be fed should be of international in- terest nowadays There time when hogs got their growth, and much of their fat from roots and nuts and acorns in the unfenced woodlands in Ken lucky It has not been long since American beef was to a large extent produced from free grazing upon Western ranges Nowadays little food is produced the United States otherwise than from high-prced reed The self-supporting reindeer, a tenant of the Alaskan ranges might conceivably become the suc- cessor of the Texas bghorn the mast fed" hog put hardly to such an extent that the price of beef in Chicago would decline far as the figures at which beef was quoted when there were few fences west of the Mississippi.