The Seward gateway., 1922-04-11

Cv7 UTTCTU yTIrU yTl.t -y7T7T-TT---7 -rr----- l left us broke The, resulting oconse- qyuepcesl of financial depression anr want are. subjects not requiring the mental insight of the phisolopher and metaphysician. Any man with intel ligence enough to spear salmon or skin porcupine should be conscious of the damning effects of poverty upon the domestic relations of people. You people here know the social status in Alaska as we'll as l. You have noticed the men and women who came here flush with enthusiasm and hope, and unwavering confidence in the fidelity of each other You have seen the first indications of storm, and later seen the barque go upon the rocks. You know that at bottom poverty was the entering wedge and you know that this system of government forced upon the unwilling people of Alaska is respon- sible for whatever poverty there is in this great storehouse of natural wealth. And that being true, am teaching my boys that every poor Alaska girl who goes astray, every youth who sinks and is lost in the Quagmire of misfor- tune, every husband and wife whose lives are shattered by broken hopes of fortune, every one is a victim of gov ernmental despotism; and that if my self do not survive to remove the cause of their calamities, then my boys shall assume the task of averaging them. Home rule and self-government for Alaska is our only hope. Moreover, in that direction alone lies safety. So long as far-distant authority, necessarily ignorant of our problems and our needs, can direct and enforce the ad- ministration of our local affairs, so long will Alaska be upon the rocks. The circumstance that the Washington governments in their endless quad rennial successions have no actual in tecest in Alaska than to provide soft berths for their politcial henchmen is a matter of no concern to me. never knew crime to be perpetrated from a benevolent motive except in Robin Hood fiction; although I defy any man to point out a political atrocity perpe- trated upon poor, protesting Alaska in which a sham pretense of benevolent design was not assigned as the moving cause
 take it that no intelligent man in these modern days would question the inherent right of men to be free when they are capable of properly or 1cring their own affairs. If any man :. Toflan in Alaska feels that our risat to be free and independent in tha matter of our local resources and ia t,lc ordering of our own lives is an
 
 take up that matter with him or her by correspondence. It would be inn possible to cover the subject in a plat form talk even were it devoted exclu- sively to the philosophy of human rights. All modern pubiicists, all dis interested statesmen, all students of ethics, virtually all intelligent men, now concede as a fundamental princi- pie of justice that every country right fully belongs to the people who inhabit it; who create it's values; and who rightfully look to it for a livelihood. And, it is equally well settled in the domain of morals and good conscience, that claim, or even proof, of supe- covet it, is insufficient to divest the rightful owners of title to their home land. Therefore when the surface forms and trappings of an artificial title are brushed aside, and such title is shown to rest only upon superior force, and to be maintained only for the furtherance of alien interests, it is self-evident that the moral right to the government of the Alaskan people resides exclusively in the Alaskan peo- pie themselves and not otherwise.
 Dropping for a moment from the moral plane to the sordid plane of purely legalized title, the ground upon which our liberty is withheld from us is still decidedly uncertain. Every school boy knows that in 1867 Alaska was ostensibly bargained, sold and de livered to the United States by the Russian autocrat of the moment for the sum of $7,2OO,000. His title to the property had been originally acquired through the exercise of superior phy- sical force and against the protests of