THE NOME NUGGET
Published Monday, Wednesday and Friday by The
NOME PUBLISHING CO.
Nome, Alaska
Telephone: Main 125 P. O. Box 613
$1.50 PER MONTH $16.00 A YEAR
W. A. and EMILY BOUCHER .Editors
Entered as second cla*s matter October 14. 1943, at the postoffice at
Nome. Alaska, under the Act of March 3. 1379.
Wednesday, October 2, 1946
Income Taxes And Federal Payrolls
(Seattle Post-Intelligencer)
Secretary of the Treasury Snyder was speaking as a
New Deal politician when he declared in an address
before the American Bankers Association in Chicago
that no income tax reduction will be feasible in the near
future.
“For our common good,” he said, “our present tax
levels must be maintained for some time. This is ines
capable if we are to achieve a balanced budget and a
surplus to he used to reduce the public debt.”
In arriving at that conclusion Mr. Snyder overlooked
an obvious fact:
Continuance of the present burdensome and confisca
tory income tax levels is “inescapable” only if the main
tenance of the New Deal’s present swollen army of po
litical payrollers is also “inescapable/’
Reducing the payroll army obviously would make it
possible for the government to lower income tax rates
and still meet its obligations to balance the budget and
make payments on the public debt.
But the New Deal administration is steadily expand
ing the payroll army.
In its September report, the joint Congressional com
mittee on reduction of nonessential federal expendi
tures, of which Senator Byrd of Virginia is chairman,
pointed out that 21,372 employees were added to the
payrolls of civilian government departments and age:
cies in July. Only the war and navy departments re
duced their civilian payrolls.
In its preceding report, made public in August, the
Byrd committee revealed that in the year since V-J Day
permanent peacetime government agencies expanded
their payrolls from 957,683 to 1,213,974, and that agen
cies created since V-J Day had added 41,150 more pay
roll names.
Senator Byrd reported also that through the liquida
tion of “emergency war agencies” by Congressional or
der, the number of employees in such agencies had de
creased from 159,773 at the end of the war to 54,409 last
June, but that only a few of the 105,364 displaced em
ployees actually went off the federal payroll.
The New Deal merely transferred them—67,881 to
established peacetime bureaus and departments and
41,500 to the newly created postwar agencies.
In many of the departments and agencies there is less
work to do now than there was under the pressure of
war, but the New Deal has nevertheless added 318,633
employees to the payrolls.
As Senator Byrd observed:
“The conclusion that jobs have been manufactured
in order that they can be retained is inescapable.”
Republican members of Congress have asserted that
if a Republican majority is elected to Congress in No
vember, income tax rates can be reduced next year.
Referring to those assertions, Secretary Snyder said
in his address before the Bankers Association:
“I think it is pure fantasy, if not plain demogogy, to
talk of tax reduction and debt reduction in the same
breath.”
(However, it is entirely feasible to reduce income taxes
without interfering with the process of reducing the
public debt.
All that is necesary is to reduce government spending
enough to offset the loss in revenues occasioned by the
income tax reduction, and the treasury would be exact
ly as able to make payments against the debt as it is un
der the present onerous income tax levels.
KEEP AN EYE ON THAT
I
One Man's Opinion . . .
(By Walter Kiernan)
The government is pressing a search for hidden meat
—Fresh gravy stains on a vest will be enough to convict
. . . And Mike Jacobs is pressing a search for a hidden
heavyweight—Only Billy Conn has expressed a willing
ness to step on the chopping block again . . . Billy says
time he will fight Joe for charity—Last time he also
carried Faith and Hope into the ring. . . . Since the Mau
riello fight local spies are getting cablegrams reading,;
“Forget the secret of the atom bomb—Get the secret of;
Joe Louis.” . . . The bones of the only man who might
have licked Louis arrived in New York this week—One|
half million years too late. ... He was the Java giant—|
Not a coffee drinker—but a fellow who lived in Java in^
the days of giants. ... He was so big hecould eat a wild j
animal at one sitting. Right now—so could we.
—
Akin To Treason
(Rocky Mountain News)
Two Russian fliers, who hade a forced landing in the
American zone of Korea, acknowledged that they had
“received every courtesy” from our armed forces.
Yeah, but when they get back to Mother Russia,]
Mama may spank. Talk like that isn’t what Pravda re
gards as ideologically sound.
War is no longer safe for generals—or for anyone.
By Marjorie Goding Neil
Assistant Secretary to E. L. Bartlett, Alaska's Delegate to Congress
STATEHOOD GALLUP POLL
The voting public of the United
| States favors statehood for Alaska
by a large majority, according to
statistics recently published by
George Gallup, Director of the
Gallup Poll.
In favor of Alaska being admit
ted as the 49th State were 64 per
cent of those polled, while 12 per
cent were opposed and 24 percent
undecided. The two arguments
favored by the greatest number
questioned were based on Alaska’s
I strategic importance to the de
fense of the Nation and Alaska’s
right to have equal representation
with all the states.
HOMESITES ELIMINATED
FROM NATIONAL FORESTS
Nine Alaska homesites have
been eliminated from the Chugach
9
and Tongass National Forests
through action taken this week by
Acting Secretary of the Interior
Warner W. Gardner, making a to
! tal of 26 tracts of land restored in
the last month to entry under the
applicable public land laws.
Applicants for homesites, who
should now be able to obtain pat
ent to their homesites from the
Anchorage Land Office as soon as
they have established preference
to the tracts of land by proving
valid existing rights, are: Claude
Blankenship, Seward; Ralph
Bums, Ketchikan; Lyle C. Wal
lace, Ketchikan; Albert J. Mayer,
Ketchikan; William Beitzel,
Ketchikan; Lawrence W. Carson,
Ketchikan; Alex Daroff, Juneau;
Joe Connors, Ketchikan; and Burl
L. Parret, Ketchikan.
, EMERGENCY
FOOD PACKAGE®.
A check in the amount of
$3326.40 collected by the Fait
banks unit of American Women®
Volunteer Services will be pre
sented to the President of the
United States on September 30
in connection with sending emer
gency food packages abroad.
The gift will be given the Pres
ident by Mrs. Ogden L. Mills, Na
tional President of AWVS and
widow of the former Secretary of
the Treasury. g|
CHILKOOT BARRACKS •
Chilkoot Barracks, consisting of
some 70 buildings and the area,
including woodland and covering
400 acres, has been awarded to
the Veterans Alaska Cooperative
Company, reversing an award
made by lot on August to Kenneth
E. O’Harra of Anchorage, opera
tor of the O’Harra Bus Lines.
The decision, rendered by As
sistant Secretary of the Interior
Warner W. Gardner, was made
following hearings brought about^
by an appeal of the Veterans or
ganization that Mr. O’Harra’s
company was not qualified under
the regulations of the Surplus
Property Act since it did not meet
the requirements of “small busi
ness.”
Both parties bid $105,000, and
the property will be turned ove^
to the Veterans group by the dis-^
posal agency, the Bureau of Land
Management of the Interior De
partment, for that amount.
Assistant Secretary Gardner’s
decision that the O’Harra Bus
Lines was not “small business”
was based on the facts submitted
at the hearings that the company
controls almost 75 percent of the
highway motor transportation^
business in the Territory and has
no competition in many parts of
Alaska.
In his concluding remarks, Mr.
Gardner stated that if Chilkoot
Barracks ‘‘were awarded to
O’Harra under a veteran’s prefer
ence and added to the already ex
tensive properties of the dominant
bus operator in Alaska, I do not
see that there would be produced
the ‘maximum of independent op
erators’, ‘an equitable distribution
of surplus property,’ or a strength
ened ‘competitive position of small
business concerns’ as provided in
the Surplus Property Act.”
The Veterans Cooperative Com
pany contemplates establishment
of varied small independent enter
prises at Chilkoot Barracks, in
cluding grocery and drug stores,
filling stations, hardware stores, i
dairies and other similar busi
nesses in plans designed to aid
several hundred veterans and
their families. Many of the mem
bers of the organizatoin served in
Alaska during the war.
AIR MAIL RATE NOW
FIVE CENTS OUNCE
The air mail postage rate has
been reduced from eight cents tc^
five cents an ounce, it was an
nounced yesterday by S. David
Mazen, postmaster.
He states that a great increase in
outgoing airmail poundage as well
as the incoming weight of airmail
carried, is expected by his office.
Mr. Mazen says that persons,
having on hand, eight cent stamps
and stamped envelopes, may re
deem them within sixty days or
until Nov. 30.
fa
... — -
PAN AMERICAN EMPLOYEES
VACATION HERE f
Pan American employees on*
vacation in Nome are Mr. and
I Mrs. Williford of the Fairbanks
office and William Sherman, me
' teorologist.
1