The Alaska daily empire., 1922-08-29
SIBERIA IS IRRITABLE
 NELL ON EARTH; FACTS
(Letter From Siberia in Nome
 Nugget.)

East AstpS, olDCiiN' ohit Ib, lJ--. "A hell on earth."-No other words will adequately describe the situa- tion here in Northeast Siberia. than the heading | have given this ar ticle. Almost every natiYe house in the country is employed in making raw alcohol; a vile connection made out of flour and sugar fermented. cooked over Primus or seal oil lamp. and distilled into spirit by running it through an old rifle bar rell or some iron pipe that they may chance to have.
 l will try 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 get old enough will follow in the footsteps of their parents) the fath- CT tests the strength every once in Il Nn.fc w tli d Sl5OJh NeHu IL OhS enough to burn on the spooa) When the bottle is half full, another one replaces it and it is immediately drunk rp. This is enough to fire the brain and is the beginning of a drunken orgy that very often ends with burning up of the house or death of one of the occupants by a knife thrust from a crazy savage.
 The poor little children crouch in terror and watch father mother older sisters and brothers become raving 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 distif lery and everything that a native gets in the line of pelts goes right back in flour and sugar; the latter article is in great demand and trad CTS reap rich harvest This con coction is harmful and many big husky men and women are now spit ting blood. or have pains in the ab- d0nen rrcquenlly.
 It's awful to think that with our boasted civilization League of Ma tions, etc, etc, such things can oc- cur next door to Americas golden shores of Alaska, and that somc- thing cannot be done to save 3 noble race from extinction, for, with sy- philis and alcohol, both products of the white man, their doom is sealed, but if something was done in the next year or two it would work wOn- ders among the remaining people
 Are they worth saving? I should say SO. They are superior in every way to the Eskimo 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, and it's got now that it's difficult for a young native boy to get wife as the white man first has his pick why? l don't know, from what can see the women slave worse for the Russian trader. than for Chuckchee, but l suppose it's the clothes. The trader dresses them in spotted deerskins and wolverine trimmings, while the Chuchchee only has black deerskins and dog trim miDgs.
 Their conditions commenced in 1917; before that the country was fairly quiet. natives prosperous and syphilis; but now they are poor. and discontenacd; 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 of drones live off them Nat urally their energy soon wancs, hun ger all around is the result. What to do about 1t? America or Eng land would stop it quickly, as Chuckchce fears and respects an cssicial, who is an official. but looks down on and treats with contempt the class that are sent to these parts. by-God knows who, and al though posing IS superior to the natives, is not his equal in my opin ion, but far below him in human intelligencc. though he is called WHITE MAN. Well, maybe he knew the secret of soap-whilc the poor native didn't.