The Daily Alaska empire., 1943-01-27

structive measures for greater and better Alaska homeland in the days of peace to come.
 Against Sales Tax
 Also, in my previous message l made no reference to sales tax I considered then and l consider now that sales tax, or indeed any form of consumption tax, is thor oughly undesirable for Alaska. A sales tax may have certain merits in parts of the nation when and after all other well recognized and long established forms of taxation such as income taxes and property taxes have been adopted. A sales tax in Alaska would be particularly obnoxious and indefensible, because it would scarcely touch those who come up here for brief season each year merely to extract wealth from Alaska and take it outside with them. The highly prosperous sea- sonal workers from the States, in the canneries or on the fishing grounds, or on the constructor jobs, whose wants are largely supplied for them, would pay next to nothing in sales taxes This tax would fall almost wholly on the genuine AL askans, the people who live here all the year around, those who have their homes here and want to stay here. They are already struggling against high cost of living which sales tax would further increase.
 Two Years Ago
 T shall not detain you long to tell you what might have been. Two years ago the Territory was at it's all-time apex of prosperity. Gold had reached the unprecedented fig ure, of $26 6,000 ,00O. Salmon was nor nal. The greatest construction pro gram for any part of the United States was under way, bringing into the Territory. tens of millions of dollars, which in turn spread out to pass through the tills of mer- chants, motion picture houses, banks, restaurants. liquor stores, to every trade and profession. No part of this, under our rigid and anti quated tax system, went into the Territorial treasury And the reve- nues that might have been secured would have more than solved all the Territory's fiscal problems for the duration.
 Now two years have passed. Gold has folded up, although we still have the tax revenue from some what reduced gold production of last year. Salmon packing is cur tailed. We are probably midway in our great construction program tens of millions have been spent in these two years, gone for tax pur- poses beyond recovery But still more millions will be spent in the next year and probably within the next two years. And these millions have built up high wages and more employment and more prosperity among the wage earners than ever before in the history of Alaska. Th> economic station of the Territory, though not quite so good in pros pect as two years ago, is in actuality still very good.
 Two years hence, when the Leg islature meets again, there will be no income from gold from the pre- ceding year; gold revenue will be a memory. The salmon industry will probably remain curtailed as now. The last echoes of hammering on the construction program too will have faded out. The outside con- tractors will have returned to the States, and so will their workers. The high scale of wages which has made everybody rich in the last two years will be no more. The ces- sation of all production but of war necessities will have reduced the stocks of merchants to the barest