The Daily Alaska empire., 1951-08-30

I by the Bureau of Reclamation as report on its S150,000 "investi- gation" of the Territory and re- gently released by the Secretary
 of the Interior. displays particular
 weakness in the portions that deal
 with Alaska history.
 The compilers of the report
 show that they have poor grasp
 on significant parts of the Terri 1 torys history. That should not, perhaps, be serious defect in a document that concerns itself mainly with the future, but 1t is
 fact that the events of yester- day do have a direct relationship ] to the events of today and tomor- ] TOW. in Alaska as elsewhere. It is significant, for example, i that the new American settlers in Alaska had trouble with the De- partment of the Interior almost
 as soon as the American flag was 1 raised at Sitka.
 The Interior Department denied Sitkans their claims to a townsite in 1868, thus virtually haltlng their efforts to organize an ef-
 fective local government. Alaskans
 have been battling the Interior Department for more than 8o {! years, and the end is not in sight The Bureau report does state, quite correctly, that the decade beginning in 1910 was an era or
 depression for Alaska and was marked hy a recession in popula- tion."
 But the report does not dwell
 on the causes of that depresslon. The reason for this omission is per haps understandable. The slump in Alaskan industry, business and development began immediately
 after the Federal bureaus started
 monkeying with the Territory's ec- i onomy in wholesale fashion. It was during the first decade ol
 the century that the big coal ana OH
 reserves were created, and they have
 been followed by other reserves ol
 one kind and another.
 That was the beginning of what
 Chief Morgan claims, and Secre- tary Chapman echoes, is "a res instability of the Federal Govern- ment to conserve and develop these
 resources"
 It WAS also the kind of thing
 that prompted the late Judge James i Wickersham to write, many years ago: Alaska must yet break through
 the maze of red tape and duplica-
 ton of governmental labors created
 bv executive proclamations and ord
 CTS and bureaucratic rules and reg gulations before it will have real
 American home rule"
 Although Chief Morgan bra
 zenly asserts that, in his report
 the viewpoints are those of the
 vast majority of the citizens of AL
 aska," he offers no proof that this 1 is so.
 Chief Morgan has not been ill the Territory any great While ana
 when he has been around a llttie
 longer he will no doubt learn that just the contrary is true, parucu-
 larly among Alaskans who went
 through the early years of "conser- vation'
 Exactly how much damage the Interior Department has done All aska and how much it has retarded development of the Territory is diff ficult to assess because of changes that have taken place in the entire
 country. It is certain that it did
 manage to tie up Alaska's major
 coal resources at time when there
 was interest in developing them on
 large scale and until there was
 no longer any interest in develop ting them.
 The restrictions on both coal and oil lands have been some
 what relaxed by leasing laws, but
 the Interior Department still retains some strings on them.
 | As recently as last month the chairman of the board of directors
 of the Texas Company, one of the
 larger oil producers, said govern ment restrictions on Alaska oil lands are still so tight that large companies are not interested in them.
 l A recent example of the Interior 1 Departments determination to con- tinue it's control of the resources of Alaska is seen in the matter of the | tidelands.
 Since the founding of the United
 States, the tidelands have belonged to the individual states. Harold Ickes, during his term as Secretary of the Interior, initiated move to take over the tidelands for the Fed eral government. The issue has been fought in the courts and is being fought in Congress, and the Inter- for Department may yet grab the tidelands, which in some states are very valuable.
 As for Alaska, it would never get the tidelands, even with state hood, under the provisions of the statehood bill now before Congress. This bill has the blessing of the Interior Department, and the In- terior Department would no doubt