The Cordova daily times., 1919-11-11

OnueT the CdpLlOn Ol RldSRd the Deserted" our former townsman, Rev s. Hall Young, contributes lengthy article to the New Era Magazine, the official medium of the Presbyterian church, in which he joins with some others of the clergy in painting Alaska in it's darkest colors, but admits that the depression is only temporary and the unlimited resources of the terri tory are eventually to be developed with the return of an era of pros perity He writes in part as follows:
 It has been my fortune-good for tune, I esteem ito have been inti- mately acquainted with the young giantess, Alaska-for she has the spirit of perpetual youth-for more than forty-one years. She is generally depicted in the imagination of her admirers, as young woman of large but symmetrical proportions, seated upon the snowy peak of sky-piercing mountain, arrayed rather lightly for the Arctic climate that is supposed to environ her, attended on one hand by a polar bear and on the other by a giant moose; and holding in one hand a miners pick and in the other a reaper's sickle; her head crowned with a diadem composed of gold and icicles. There is look of benignity and happiness upon her beautiful conference, and she is altogether adorable.
 Were I to depict Miss Alaska this year I would present a forlorn and forsaken figure, with pick and sickle cast away gold crown fallen off her head weeping copious tears which congeal into ice as they fall
 For Alaska is at present decidedly |'in the dumps" When I went to her shores in 1878 she was despised and forsaken. There were 35O00 heather natives on her shores and less than 200 whites. I had the great and undeserved good fortune of being able to persuade the only American young woman in the territory at that time to marry me. There were only two postoffices-Sitka and Fort Wran- gell And a little steamer came once month from Portland, Ore.-there ,1c with our mail Alaska had been taken by the United States govern ment, garrisoned by soldiers and vis- ited often by war vessels for ten years; then given up as bad invest ment. There was not a gold mine, coal mine, copper mine, marble quarry or lumber mill in the terri tory, and only one salmon cannery, started that year.
 I need not recount here the steps of surprising progress made by this Northwestern possession of ours. Alaska has amazed the world, and is recognized as one of the richest prov inces in natural resources to be found anywhere on the globe. Its progress, though it seemed very slow to us who were toiling and moiling there, ap- peared surprisingly swift to those who knew Alaska as Stewards Folly" and now know it as Uncle Sam's Treasure House." The $7,OO0,000 paid for the territory was money thrown into the Pacific ocean,; now we know that the territory has pro- duced, principally in the last twenty two years, over $SOO,OOO,OOO in differ ent kinds of treasure.
 But this year the wave of progress seems to have receded. It is decid- edly low tide on the Alaska shore. Two years ago it's white population was estimated at from 50,000 to 55,000. The coming winter it is probable that not more than 25,O00 of the Caucasian race will be found in the territory. The value of exports will be dropped to oneshalf the amount reported for the fiscal year ending June 30, 1918. The production of gold, copper, tin, lumber, farm products, and even canned salmon, all show a depressing decrease. Towns that were booming two years ago are now almost desert ed, and the activity of the gold pros- pector and the settler is slowed up to what would have appeared to those of us who know this immense wealth and inevitable greatness of Alaska in some of its heydays, an unbelievable