The Alaska daily empire., 1920-09-01
HOME RULE FOR ALASKA URGED BY BIC NEWSPAPERS THROUGHOUT
 NATION, SAYS LITERARY DIGEST

 dividual initiative. Ambition to suc-. ceed in life, to get ahead. to be- come financially ndependent-these things, coupled with the spirit of adventure, caused men to foresake the comfort and safety Of civiliza- tion and press on into the new lands west of the Alleghenies.
 The spirit of high emprise that animated the pioneers still obtains. It would be directed toward Alaska were it given little encourage ment. IL never will come from group of incoordiaated and barely eunctioning bureaus in Washington. D. e."
 Helping Hand Needed.
 Alaska needs helping hand now" declares the Knoxville Sen tinel, but it would seem, in run ming through catalog of Alaska's resources. that the Territory may have to rescue Uncle Sam from the plight in which he finds himself, particularly with regard to coal for the Pacific fleet, paper for the na- ton, oil for naval and merchant ships, and waterp0wer fer manufac- turing paper. As we read in the Boston Herald:
 No area within the jurisdiction of the United States has been so grotesquely misunderstood as Alaska. The resources of Alaska have been known for many years, of course; but they have been mainly recapitu- lated in the arid pages of govern ment publications, which arc read by very few.
 Tt is expected that the needs of the Pacific fleet in the matter of coal will presently be supplied from this source. The fisheries of Alaska. moreover, have hardly been touched, although they are known to be of great value, All in all, it is a country of wonderful possibilities; the wonder is that we have been SC long in realizing any of them"
 Alaskas Resources.
 As the Boston Herald says, most of the information we have Of Alaska comes from 'the arid pages of government publications. For instance we are told that the Fed eral income tax of Alaska usually amounts to more than fifteen mill lions; the Territory proudly claims the only volcano and the highest mountain (Mount Mckinley in North America from reports that there are not enough passenger steamers to carry the people who want te visit the country this sum- mer we gather that it is becoming summer playground; the same ground that is covered with snow in winter has grown wheat that took first prize at Minneapolis AL aSka contains the only placer tin mines on the continent; the marble from the Territory for which Uncle sam paid less than two cents an used to adorn Western office build inGs and hotel lobbies; and the value of AlasEa's products since the country was acquired by the United States is almost a billion dollars. The newest industry. and also one of the more profitable. is that of reindeer raising, which has made the majority of the Eskimos econ omically Independent; the gain in this industry. we are told, has been more than twelve hundred per cent. Dr. Nelson. chief of the Biological Survey, is now in Alaska studying reindeer propagation. The navy, for the first time in history, is now mining its own coal in Alaska; and, finally, a transpaciic cable and land line between the United States and the Orient, via the Aleutian Penin- sula, is to be considered during the next sessicn of Congress.
 Capital and enterprise are need ed to usher in the day Of supreme accomplishment in Alaska" declares Governor Cox's paper, the Dayton News, but the Rochester Times-Un fen says:
 Young men cant 6o it alone; the pioneer wives and mothers in this country did as much, if not more. to build it up than the men. Virile young men-and women might dc well to consider Alaska"
 Folks arc apt 10 forget that AL aska is about one-fifth as biz as the United States" writes Burt M. Me- Connell in the New York (Sunday) Times. This writer reminds us that in Europe twenty millions of peo- ple live and proper where climatic conditions are less favorable than those of Alaska" and he suggests that "Swedes and Norwegian, who are not afraid of Q littlescold wealth