The Cordova daily times., 1922-04-12
MIR. SUTHERLAND'S FIGURES

Jcourteous hearing by a representative AD audience of Cordovans last night in the Empress Theatre. His talk here was practic- ally the same as that delivered heretofore at other places He assailed the transportation companies declaring their charges on freight from Seattle to Alaska were higher than the tariffs between Seattle and San Francisco. To prove this statement he read some figures, said to have been from expense bills obtained from Godstein's store in Juneau.
 The audience good-humoredly appIauded his demand for lower freight rates, though how this could be brought about by renominating him was not hade plain by Mr. Sutherland. It was an argument of attack, exclusively
 While the audience listened throughout with patient courtesy it included business men who afterward declared that the Delegate was not fair and that his figures were inaccurate. One of them bet two hats to one that he could dis prove the Delegates statement. Today this business man submitted his proofs in the form of recent expense bills and demanded his hat from his doubting friend, who had said: "Well, he gave the figures, and figures do not lie"
 In the first place, said the business man, who is a member of one of Cordova's largest firms, Mr. Sutherland failed to tell his au- dience that there's a rate war on between the Seattle-San Francisco steamship lines which recently resulted in heavy cuts, doubtless tem~ porarv The dispatches today announce, in fact, that the representatives of the steamship lines, in a meeting at Portland, had agreed to re-estabish the previous conference rates, which means the ending of the rate war and it's special low tariffs. That dispatch will be found in this issue
 Answering the statement that ght charges from Seattle to Alaska are fifty per cent or more higher than between Seattle and San Francisco, the merchant submitted some ex- pense bills showing that six cases of butter, weighing 70 pounds each, cost from Seattle to Cordova 60 cents a case on the measurement basis. The rate from San Francisco to Seattle, one of his bills stated was $1O6 F a hundred, lower by ten cents from Seattle to Cordova than from San Francisco to Seattle, though the distance to Cordova is about twice as great.
 Flour, from Seattle to Juneau, the bills show is $9 ton, while from San Francisco to Seattle it is $1150 ton. The rate to Cordova is $14 ton, only $2.50 more than to San Fran cisco and twice the distance, whereas the Del egate claimed it was fifty per cent more.
 In like manner today other statements of the Delegate were being examined.
 Assailing the "big corporations" to catch unwary votes is an old game of politicians, with which the people of Alaska are wearily familiar. Back in Washington and New York these politicians usually wink roguishly on state occasions, when they meet the keepers of the octopus in the flesh, and remark deprecatingly that it's all in the big game of politics. Take issue publicly with one of them, on facts, and he immediately stirs up the dust with cry that his challenger is de- lending the octopus.
 The Times and other journals must run that risk when duty requires them to point out glar- ing errors and to demand fair play, even for the octopii. The Times holds no brief for any corporation and is as free and independent as the soaring eagle. This is the peoples family