The Cordova daily times., 1922-03-07
TUESDAY, MARCH 7, 1922
"A1N'T IT THE TRUTH!'

In blissful ignorance of the authenticated fact that Alaska in the vicinity of Cordova, has world of petroleum of the finest kind awaiting capital and labor for development, thousands of outside people are investing millions, in the aggregate in oily wildcat enterprises, promoted by sharks compared to whom old Soapy Smith was a gentleman, a saint and a scholar, while other thousands on q sportsman's chance, are pouring their money into 'hopeful holes'' in the ground upon a mere suspicion of oil.
 At Astoria, Or, where oil is about as likely to be found as snowballs in Honolulu, they have actually drilled half way to China at an expense of $250,000 and the whole communi- tvs religion.
 The suckers won't stand for chding either. To the skeptical friends suggestion of a linn it to credulity they say, "Aw, shut up! It's OUR oil well.'
 The Tie That Binds" In America
 In America, in Russia, in all great coun- tries, ''the tie that bnds'' is the railway tic Everything depends upon transportation. Pro- lessor Lomonossoff, Russias leading railroad man under the late Tsar, proclaimed this warn ing in an address in the arena at Seattle in 1918 while on a tour of this country Famine impossible as well as Bo]shcvik chaos he declared, with adoouate railway transpor- tation between the different sections of a great producing country
 While the people were starving in European Russia in l91S-19 scores of millions of poods of wheat were going to waste in the grain pro- tuc'n@ sections of eastern Siberia
 If Alaska's wheat production in 1920 had been ten millions instead of three thousand bushels, and other cereals, vegetables and fruits in the same proportion. without facil- t'es for rapid and cheap transit to the markets the situation would have been a parallel of that existing in Siberia. Transportation is the primary need, without which mineral wealth is waste and production only futile Diamonds as big as hen eggs may be common on Mars
 Aiming, in 1918, to assist in the rehabili- 1 tation of Russia, the American government, recognizing the basic need, sent Colonel John F. Stevens and a large railroad crops of picked men to Siberia for the purpose of repairing and restoring service upon the trans Siberian line. We then were absorbed in foreign af- fairs, following after visions and guided by dreams.
 Public welfare depends upon the transporta- tlon system, as bodily health does upon the circulation of the blood. Auxiliary to this, the system of communication, by postal mails, telegraph and telephone is essentially anala- gous to the nervous system of the human body. When these vital functions are deranged, then follows disease, decrepitude and death. Gaze Too Elevated ]
 Under Mir. Wilson our gaze was so elevated that we could see clearly the horrors in Rus- 1 sia, the causes and effects of tyranny, ignor- ance and revolution. Under Harding, Hughes and Hoover, ,-an unexampled trimvirate of business efficiency-we are being forced to gaze upon the needs of America and the dan- { gers which heset our own matchless country
 Our men abroad in the world war learned $ we'll the indubtable truth that while all lands have their own peculiar lures the United , States IS the best country on earth, with insti- unions of liberty and sustaining government $