The Cordova daily times., 1921-06-28
WHY ALASKA IS LOSING POPULATION
(Literary Digest)


 ''Something is radically wrong when new country as inviting Alaska loses almost a quarter of its population in ten years,' declar- the Providence Journal, and its opinion is seconded by practically every newspaper in AL aska and score or more in the United States proper. According to the Census Bureau the white population of Alaska decreased 23.4 per cent, between 1910 to 1920. In 1910 there. were 36,4O0 white in the territory; now there are only 27,SS3. When it comes to agreeing upon the reason or reasons for this loss of almost 5000 inhabitants, however, there is a wide diver gence of opinion. "Bureaucratc oppression,' ' declares Thomas B. Dravton in the Dearborn Independent; "eNtreme conservation laws, ' ayers the Seattle Post-Inteligencer; ''war con- ditions, which called from the territory great percentage of volunteers than from any state,' thinks the Boston Globe; "high cost of gold production while the value of gold remains stationary believes another. But "the dead hand of bureaucracy as the Seattle Times re fers to the long-distance administration of AL aska by Washington departments, is given as the reason for Alaska's decline by the ma jor ity of editorial writers. "Thc country is being bureaued to death,' maintains the Denver Rocky Mountain News;, there are thirty eight
 
 operating on Alaska 5000 miles away' It is is as impossible for this system to succeed,' as serts another writer. Gas it would be for the British Parliament to run Canada or Australia from London" '%, Conservation looked very well on paper, we are told "but in practice it has fai1ed,' in the opinion ow the Denver paper above quoted "Ten years ago a tumult was raised, with the ,aonf tbafA Alaclyo tia6 down pn1InSS folds of 'red tape, and over it was posted a sign, Conservation notes the Cincinnati Times-Star "well, Alaska has been conserved , in manner of speaking-by conflicting and in tedlocking bureaus. In the opinion of Chair man Curry, of the house committee on territor- ies, however, long distance control has failed. ,"
 
 s"The present government of Alaska is little better than that against which the American Colonies rebelled in 1776'' asserts the Portland Oregonian; ''it is a mockery. It is absentee government by an oigarchy. Whatever devel- opment the territory can boast of has been made in spite of the government rather than with it's help.' Yet we are told by the Seat tie Post Intelligencer in another editorial, "Al- aska is asking far less than was readily and un- occasionally granted to every other territory of the United States''
 ''The only way to make people worthy of self-government is to give them elf-govem- ment," ayers Dr. Frank Crane in the New York Globe, yet the Berkeley (Cal) Times tells us that ''the white pioneers of the North have a lesser degree of home rule and less considera- ton than the Fiipinos." :"
 ''The entire country is interested in Alaska" ;" declares the Kansas City Star President Har- I;nr ,1on to c,,oDI rooEc in fhn forrI tory studying it's needs, says dispatches, and Secretary of the Interior Fall, with several oth- CT Washington officials, and half a dozen gov ernors of Western states also have arranged to visit Alaska this summer, much to the delight of its residents. "Aside from the question of justice to the people in the territory, any move that would benefit conditions there would mean call to many young men in the states, " thinks