The Alaska daily empire., 1920-09-01
(From Literary Digest.)

 regulation from Washington and Uncle Sam needs more coal. wood- pulp, fuel oil, and other essential material supplies from Alaska. These seem to be the outstanding facts em- phasized by the recent visit of Sec rotary of the Navy Daniels to our northern Territory. The secretaries, reports J. J Underwood in the Se- attle Times, found that by establish ing a coaling base midway between the Orient and the United States on the Aleutian Peninsula, the Shipping Board vessels plying between Seat tie and the Orient could save a thcusand tons of cargo carrying ca pacity on each voyage, or enough to enable each ship to pay for itself through increased earning capacity within period of ten years. This would also make it unnecessary to ship coal from Virginia and Pennsyl- varia to the Pacific fleet. Further more, says this paper both secre- tarias are very much concerned over the threatened shortage of fuel oil. for the United States Shipping Board operates many oil-burners, and ;n recent years it has been the custom to build oil-burning naval vessels because of their increased steaming radius, speed, and fighting capacity, and these are not easily changed to coal-burners. Alaska's g oil resources, we are told, are just beginning to be exploited,
 Needs Home Rule.
 That Alaska needs more home rule for the prompt and efficient development Of her vast natural re- sources is the contention of many of our papers in widely separated parts of the Union. "WashlnStoh should give the Alaskan Territorial government wider discretion, for Washington can net know Alaska needs,' argues the Syracuse Post Standard; and Secretary Payne is quoted in the New York Times as saving: What Alaska needs is more men and women to settle the coun- try and less governmental regula- tions" More specifically the Colum- bus (Ohio) Dispatch tells us that
 Alaska is getting sick and tired of being interfered with in her de- yelopment, by the people of this country, who know nothing about conditions up there. There are many real men in Alaska-men who have gone there to make their homes, men who have developed themselves along with the develop ment that has taken place in the country, men who are capable Of saving what ought to be done and what ought not to be done.
 aThc Alaskans ask cnly that the government create a Board of De velopment, the members of which shall be Alaskans, and leave it to this Board the working out of the destiny of the Territory. It is simple request and one that ought tc be granted as soon as Congress is in session."
 Mails to and from Alaska are now handled as freight" declares tbe Seattle Times, consistent champion of Alaska. In other ways, we are told the people of the Ter ritory. six thousand miles from Washington, are poorly represented. True. points cut the Times, they arc represented in Congress by a delegate, but he does not have a vote. The chief hindrance to good government in Alaska and the de- velopment of the Territory, declares this paper, is "the burden of Fed eral bureaucracy" Continues the Times:
 Bureaucracy the Evil.
 "Centralization of Alaskan gov ornment in Alaska offers the only solution of political and econmlcI problems confronting the Northland. The greatest measure of local sell government should be accorded the Territory The dead hand of Wash ington bureaucracy should be re moved from its affairs.
 "A change in the government 5 policy toward the Territory is due in the near future. Having com pleted a railroad there, the Federal authorities must see to it that the line pays-if not at once, then as speedily as possible. There is but one way in which that end may be achieved. Alaska must be made at tractive to settlers and investors, The first step must be the bringing of Federal control, to whatever eX- tent exercised, closer to the country.
 "A bureaucracy never developed country The American West was