The Wrangell sentinel., 1947-01-10
THROUGH THE SENTINEL PERTSCOPE

How NOT to help your Delegate to Congress and at the same time help to delay needed harbOr im- provements in Alaska was viysdly revealed recently in an action of the Juneau Chamber of Commerce. Last August an executive order frOze" funds previously approprl- ated by Congress for rivers, har . bors and flood control projects as part of a program to curb Federal spending and aim toward balanc- ing the national budget. Immediate result in Alaska was at least a years delay in starting work on Wrangell NarTOws for which Con- gress had appropriated S500,O0J or other projects such as Wrangell barbor, Petersburg harbor, Port Alexander, Sitka, Gastineau Chan nel and half a dozen others, it could mean a much longer delay. Juneau Chamber which has been crying for Gastineau Channel im provements for years drew up a re- port heartily cOncurring' in the freezing order, an order which Delegate Bob Bartlett pointed out in a letter to the Chamber would result in holding up the very pro- jects he had been asked to push for by the various communities of the Territory. In the two years the Delegate has been in Congress he Lad succeeded in getting approval for either preliminary surveys and examinations or for reviews of pre- Vious reports for 24 projects in AL aska. Now he would have to battle along with the contradictory
 report O. the Juneau Chamber as a handicap. Wrote Delegate Bartlett to the Chamber:
 'Singly or taken together, these represent, in my judgment, public works in a category altogether de- fensible and completion of which would do much to assist our econ omy. . it is always easier to make cuts in Alaska than in any one of the States. I suggest it may be still easier to do so now that the President of the United States, the President of the Senate, the Speaker of the House, the Secre- tary of War, the Director of War Mobilization and Reconversion and the Director of the National Re- clamation Association have been notified by the Juneau Chamber of Commerce that immediate balanc- ing of the budget is paramount in importance, in effect, to construc- tion of rivers and harbors and flood control projects in Alaska"
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 From April 1 to December 8 of the year just ended there were 127 days when work stoppages or some sort of labor disputes tied up ships in the Alaska trade, the Maritime Commission has figured out. It's sizeable price Alaskans pay for the privilege of being Alaskans. An other season or two like that one and there's liable to be no Alaska economy or development.
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 Efforts to revive Southeast AL aska's clam industry are going fo-- ward via the scientific route. Clans are being taken from various beaches used in the commercial trade and laboratory tested with the hope of getting established a formal standard for toxfcity. Clans shipped south last year were seized by the pure food and drug admir- 1stratfon on grounds that samples showed more than the informal tolerance limit of two hundred J. called mouse units" In other words, 200 units of toxic poison ing in the class would kill a mouse therefore might be injurious when eaten by a human. The tests are expected to reveal just what a. mount of the toxic poisoning found in some clans is harmful to a hu- man being. Meanwhile, the indus try in Southeast Alaska is shut down, awaiting what it hopes will be a definite standard for toxiciJy under which it can operate. Pack CTS with no gauge to go by do not care about putting out the cost ot packing on the chance their pack might pass muster Or might be tossed out for too much toxicity. Clans in the Cordova area, where they are the basis of that Commun-