The Cordova daily times., 1922-11-04
HELL ON EARTH NEXT DOOR TO
 ALASKA

 as follows:
 "A hell on earth"-no words will adequately describe the situation here l in Northeast Siberia, than the head 1 ing l have given this article. Almost every native house in the country is employed in making raw alcohol; a vile concoction made out of flour and sugar formented, cooked over Primus or seal oil lamp and dis titled into spirit by running it through an old rifle barrel or some iron pipe that they may chance to have.
 I will triy to describe the scenes that are enacted here day after day, night after night, the whole year round with only an occasional let-up, for the simple reason that with their crude implements they can drink it faster than they can make it. The gear is all set (no secrets kept from the young children who, when they l get old enough will follow in the footsteps of their parents) the father l tests the strength every once in while with a spoon (and it's strong enough to burn on the spoom. When the bottle is half full, another one replaces it and it is immediately drunk up. This is enough to fire the 1 brain and is the beginning of drunken orgy that very often ends with burning up of the house or death of one of the occupants by a knife thrust from crazy savage.
 The poor little children crouch in terror and watch father, mother, old i CT sisters and brothers become rav- ing maniacs; the little things have nowhere to go and no one to turn to, and surely the heading of this article suits their case to perfection.
 The whole country is a vast distil- lery and everything that a native gets in the line of belts goes right back in flour and sugar; the latter article being in great demand and traders reap a rich harvest. This concoction is harmful and many big, husky men and women are now spit ting blood, or have pains in the ab- domen frequently.
 It's awful to think that with our boasted civilization, League of Ma tions, etc., such things can oc- cur next door to Americas golden shores of Alaska, and that some thing cannot be done to save noble white man their doom is sealed, but ilis and alcohol both products of the 1 if something was done in the next year or two it would work wonders among the remaining people.
 1 Are they worth saving? I should say so! They are superior in every way to the Eskimos and the wonder is that they are as good as they are, considering they never had a good word preached to them in their lives. The traders only want what they can produce and their young women, l and it has become difficult for a young native boy to get wife be- cause the white man first has his I pick--why? I don't know. From what I can see the women slave worse for a Russian trader than for a Chuckchee, but l suppose it is the clothes. The trader dresses them in spotted deerskins and wolverine trimmings, while the Chuckchee has only black deerskins and dog trim mings.
 These conditions commenced in l1917; before that the country was fairly quiet, the natives prosperous and contented, the only drawback being syphilis; but now they are poor, and discontented; sons parting from their parents and moving away to some other place and taking half the house with them as their share, and all this is the result of bad words spoken during drunken de- bauch.
 A few still remember their fathers and hunt occasionally, but the bal ance are drones who live off them. Naturally their energy soon wanes, hunger all around being the result.