The Cordova daily times., 1920-09-20

WHAT'S THE MATTER
 WITH ALASKA?

$-s-s-~-@-$- ~-s-~-s-~-e-s>>>&-st ernment for Alaska, which, with some amendments, passed on March F. 1884, or nearly seventeen years after the United States had purchased this wonderful territory. (The report of the collector of customs of Alaska for the fiscal year ending June, 1919, showed the value of the shipped pro- ducts of Alaska to be $81,OOO, 900, or more than eleven times the purchase price. The report of June, 1920, is not as yet at hand but it will be very near ly $76O0O,O00.)
 When the government was provid- ed no criticism can be made as to the salaries offered for officials, or the size of the appropriation In fact, his tory shows that it was fairly liberal. The great criticism is found in the fact that it was seventeen years de- layed and while the government in- cluded a commission Of four agents for the protection of the seal fisheries, this was so late that the agents found the sea otter extinct and the seals
 bordering upon extinction. Tn later years the government finally elimina- ted the private exploitation of the seal and through it's present maintenance of the seals on the PribilOf Islands, that animal has been preserved, but the sea otter is seemingly gone for ever.
 1 It was not until the autumn of 1884 that John H. Kinkead a former mer- chant of Salt Lake City and late gov ernor of Nevada, was named governor of Alaska, and reached Sitka
 Here was country rich in gold, cop- per, coal furs, fisheries, forests and miscellaneous minerals, which by pro- | per exploitation through the land Of 1 flee, the geological survey, the coast survey, the bureau of mines, the bu- reau of fisheries, the forestry bureau and agriculture department, could have become from the spring of 1868 one of the richest of the wesetrn states or territories, yet the govern ment had purchased the vast terri tory in those early days and for sev- teen years allowed it to be absolutely l ungoverened and unregulated This could be emphasized even more strong 1 ly by showing in lengthy reference
 to history that the seventeen-year per iod without any form of government
 could be heightened to probably a
 great many more years of decidedly inefficient government by the differ ent officials appointed from time to time. As every one knows who has followed the history of Alaska, every successful development has been ac- complished by those who as private individuals pioneered the country and let us here give crdit to those pio- neers who have made Alaska famous and in many cases created a fortune for themselves purely on their own in- itiative without the aid or encourage ment of any government official but sad to say, quite frequently desipte bureaucratic red tape.
 Without laboriously going into the long years of neglect, the real indus trial history of Alaska dates from the early discovery and subsequent devel- opment of the Treadwell mine Later the Klondike discovery in Canada, a few hundred miles across the Alaska boundary line, attracted one hunderd thousand people to the Klondike and eventually these people drifted down the Yukon river into Alaska, with the result that Nome, Fairbanks and oth- CT discoveries were made. The Klon- dike discovery was twenty-two years ago, the Nome rush just twenty years gone by, and the development of the great copper deposits began about fifteen years ago, all of these events being so recent as to be we'll remembered, but each one was the re- suit of private initiative and enter prise These discoveries and the sub sequent development could easily have been made in the early seventies had there been any attempt made in developing the country immediately following it's purchase.
 We can show briefly that thirty
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