Seward daily gateway., 1924-10-01
Territorial Government
Continued from Tuesdays paper.
By J. c. MURPHY.
Let George Do 1t

LCk SSOi " " -
 And worse than all other things is the false dependence that the people place on these appointive of- ficers. On the outside, in pioneer days, when something necessary for the public good had to be done, the people got together and did it. Up here we either call mass meetings or meetings of chambers of commerce and then, usually, invite some Fed eral Official who has the spending Of public money in some related actlVl- ty and we pittifully ask him if he will cooperate. This individual, who in most cases back home, never had anything to say because his home folks knew him, may accede to our de- mands and he may turn us down and then he in all probabilities will re- gale and impress us with his stand ing with Congress and we go home and say that he is fine fellow and maybe he is and maybe he is not. He is not to blame, but the system and custom and the way of doing bus mess that gave him the say so cer- tainly is to blame.
 Overhead.
 Oh, that word overhead as lnger- soil said of religion: What crimes has been committed in thy name. Big office forces with no workers; investigations without end; antiquat- ed and long since in most places rel egated to the rear grand jury system and so on down the line. Waste of money, waste of effort and in our All aska case waste of time and country As a concrete instance, we have here in the Third Division at the head or District Court a man who is honestly trying to do the greatest possible amount of Court work with the mn imum of expense. But with the sys- tenn in vogue that he is compelled to work with, he is handicapped on ey- cry hand. If on the other hand, we had a full Territorial form ot gov ernment, with his district cut up into counties, with resident and elected sheriffs and clerks of court and dis trict attorneys in each county; with a law amended so that these elected district attorneys could bring men be- fore him on information don't you be- lieye that he could do better, easier and more effective work? If such were the case he could travel from county to county with his secretary and perform work as the same is per formed in practically every state of the union.
 And if litigants were not satisfied with his decisions, there should be a Territorial Supreme court who might review the same with the minimum of expense and time. Federal courts are noted for their austerity and State courts are noted for their sim plicity and it is a notorious fact that in the states the Federal courts are year by year and day by day as- suming authority that should remain in the State courts and up here we have a system that the courts, the lawyers and the people can neither identify nor catalogue.
 Would 1t Be Difficult to lnaugurate
 A New System?
 I believe that it would not. Given sufficient authority by changed en- abling act, a legislature could be el- ected to devise, bound and create county system which necessarily must be done. This same legislature, with power given to do so, could create a code cmmissin of Alaskans who could and would revise our laws better than the same can be done by any commit tee of Congres sand at just as small a expense as Congress could do so and the same could be and should be paid by Federal appropriation.
 Difficulties In Our Way.
 The greatest of these would be to take care of the sparse population in isolated places. But in a smaller way all of the other territories had the same difficulty to encounter and they got away with it. The writer recalls counties in North Dakota a hundred miles square with a handful of peo- pie and there were larger counties in Montana by far then that not to mention the whale of them all, Tom Greene County, Texas, which was at one time about the size of Europe, or maybe a little smaller.
 In most, if not all of the other territories, there were organized an counties with a provis- ion for the organization of the lat ter when the inhabitants thereof felt that it would be to their advantage to organize But should this form of county government be inaugurated here in Alaska, every acre in the