THE NOME NUGGET
Published Monday. Wednesday and Friday by the
NOME PUBLISHING CO.
NOME, ALASKA
Telephone: Main 125 P. O. Box 6i« 1
$1.50 PER MONTH $16.00 A YEAR
W. A. Boucher .Owner-Publisher
Emily Boucher .Local Editor
Entered as second class matter October 14. 1943, at the postoffice
at Nome, Alaska, under the Act of March 3, 1879.
I
Nome, Alaska, Monday, March 7, 1949
“U. S. LOSING RACE IN ARCTIC"—STEFANSSON
(By Joe Wing)
Is Russia winning the race to the Arctic?
“There isn’t any race,’’ said white-maned Vilhjalmur j
Stefansson grimly, “when one side doesn’t run.’’
It isn’t Russia, he made clear, that has failed to run.
The famed explorer and Arctic authority was inter
viewed in his Greenwich Village study, just off the
32,000-item library where with ten helpers and Navy
department funds he is putting together a five-million
word Arctic encyclopaedia.
“Progress north in the Soviet is comparable to that in
our west a hundred years ago,’’ he went on.
“We in Alaska are not advancing except through mil
itary activity. Canada is making almost infinitesimal
progress.’’
rne reason:
Keeping up with the Joneses!
Stefansson, of Viking ancestry himself, advanced the
theory that Americans have lost the pioneer’s readiness!
to live on the land—to hunt game for food, then to grow
crops for his own use, make his own clothes and get
along by himself.
Instead, the modern settler wants to grow a cash crop
so he can buy food with trimmings. Then the little wo
man can set the table with magazine-approved meals,
like her friends.
Russians have no such ideas.
The result—a burgeoning population of a half million
in the Siberian Arctic, doing farming, mining, lumber
ing and shipping. In the Canadian north and Alaska,!
only 100,000.
i
STATEHOOD NOT POSSIBLE FOR YEAR
(By Charles D. Watkins)
Delegate Bartlett estimated today that even if Con
gress passed the legislation approving Alaska State
hood it would take another year then for the Territory |
to become a State.
Unanimous approval by a House Public Lands Sub
Committee Friday sent the Alaska Statehood bill to the
full committee. This group is slated to consider it and
Hawaiian Statehood tomorrow.
Under the Alaskan bill—if it is enacted—the Gov
ernor would have to call a Constitutional Convention to
prepare a Constitution for submission to Alaskan vot
ers.
The approved Constitution then would go to the
President who would issue the final proclamation ad
mitting Alaska as a State.
Chairman Redden (D.-N. C.) of the sub-committee
read the sub-committee a telegram from the Women’s
Federation of Clubs saying 5,000,000 women favored
granting Alaska Statehood.
He also said that he had received statements opposed
to Statehood from W, C. Arnold, of,the fiklaska Salmon
Industry, and A1 Anderson, executive secretary of the
Alaska Mining Association.
Fatjier Paul Q. O’Conner, of Hooper Bay, Alaska tes
tified he is convinced 95 per cent of the Territory’s resi
dents want Statehood.
TAX REDUCTION PAYS OFF
(Seattle Post-Intelligencer)
The final argument against President Truman’s pro
posed 4 billion-dollar tax increase—and in favor of an
other tax reduction—has been provided by the United
States treasury department.
Among the noteworthy services which it performed,
the 80th Congress gave the overburdened taxpayers the
first decrease that they have had in years.
The social planners and spenders at Washington pro
tested in anguish.
#
FIRST HOLD ]
! t
t
I
They predicted a great decline in federal revenues
and another unbalanced federal budget.
But they were 100 per cent wrong.
Under the reduced tax rates, the treasury finds that
the government collected in 1948 nearly 2 billion dol
lars more than in 1947 under the previous higher rates.
Moreover, the New Deal was given the first balanced
budget thatl it ever had.
This record confirms an economic fact with which all
competent tax authorities are familiar but which the
New Deal has never acknowledged.
Tha%t fact is that the law of diminishing returns oper
ates in government finance as it does in all private af
fairs. When tax rates exceed a certain level, normal
business investments and business transactions either
cease to expand or else actually decline, and the gov
ernment’s share in production—which is experssed in
terms of tax returns—contracts correspondingly.
Shortly after the First World War, the late Andrew
W. Mellon, as secretary of the treasury, recommended
tax reductions and predicted that an abandonment of
wartime rates would return an increase in peacetime
revenue.
This proved to be exactly correct; and, during a pe
riod of prosperity and industrial expansion, the national
debt was reduced by billions of dollars.
On the basis of the treasury department’s own fig
ures, the Republican 80th Congress has again demon
strated the infallibility of the simple economic law.
Obviously, it would be sheer folly for the Democratic
81st Congress to ignore the twice-learned lesson.
Moreover, there is still another economic postulate
that the New Deal dangerously ignores.
Financial history proves that when taxes consume
more than 25 per cent of national income, industrial de
cline sets in.
Investors,having no incentive, quit investing; the
volume of production fails to provide necessary increas
ing employment; and stagnation turns into depression.
With a 41 billion-dollar federal budget, with several
state budgets exceeding a billion dollars each, and with
comities and municipalities seeking more money to per
mit more public spending, this coiintry is at the danger
point.
Congress should read the current treasury report,
and administration’s high-tax demands, with these por
tents in mind.
POLES EXPECT COLLEGE BOOST
WARSAW, Poland, (/P)—Poland’s ministry of educa
tion expects a 20 percent boost in enrollment of stu
dents in colleges'and universities during 1949.
The ministry estimated registrations would reach
around 100,000, compared with the previous top post
war figure of 80,000.
The rapid reconstruction of educational institutions
damaged or destroyed during the war is credited with
steadily increasing facilities for expanded student en
rollments.
Internationa News
At A Glance —
• Confined from Page One)
ther the re-shuffle might lay the
groundwork for another try at
solving the Berlin problem and
the whole German question.
Others interpreted the move as
foreshadowing further communist
crackdowns on the satellite coun
tries of Eastern Europe to win ab
solute control over the govern
ments and peoples of the region.
Andrei A. Gromyko was ap
pointed to the second spot in the
foreign ministry. Gromyko has
been an outstanding spokesman
for the policies of Molotov.
The Russian government put
out statement that would cast any
light on the situation. The Soviet
Press, which carried terse an
nouncements of the promotions,
made no comment either. There
was not the slightest hint that
Molotov was in disfavor.
Spy trials continued meantime
on both sides of the cold front.
In Sofia, a three-man people’s
court delivers its judgment tomor
row in the espionage trial of 15
Bulgarian Protestant pastors. The
trial itself ended Saturday after a
week-long orgy of confession and
self accusation by the defendants.
The prosecution has asked the
death penalty for four of the de
fendants.
In Munich, an eight-man U. S.
military commission resumed its
spy trial of eight Europeans charg
ed with gathering American mili
tary information for a foreign
power.
A prosecution witness has testi
fied that nearly all the data col
lected went to Russia.
; In Washington, Senator Mundt
<R.-S. D.) declared the United Na
tions has hired some persons who
j were fired by the state depart
ment as security risks.
• Mundt said the names of sev
eral such persons are in the files
of the House Un-American activ
ities committee. The committee,
of which Mundt is a member, has
had investigators trying to find
out whether foreign governments
have been using the United Na- A
tions as a shield for spying on the
United States.
i A conservative newspaper in
Berlin said the Soviet secret po
lice have spread a net for turn
coat communists in the Russian
zone. The paper said 30 former
communists have been arrested so
far, charged with .inciting Eastern
Germans to resist Soviet occupn
tion policies.
| In Batavia, Indonesian Repub
licans turned down an invitation
j to attend a Dutch-sponsored par
; ley on Indonesian statehood.
\_
RUSSIANS CANCEL
AERIAL FIRING PRACTICE
1 BERLIN, UP) — The Russians
started aerial firing practice today
ip the Berlin . airlift corridors,
then announced they had can
celled it.
%
A three-power verbal protest
had been lodged with the Russians
as soon as the firing was reported.
An American officer said there
was no indication that the cancel
lation was ordered as a result of
the protest
“It may be that visibility is
poor the officer said.
The officer said hundreds of
similar protests have been lodged
with the Russians at the four
power air safety center which
they ignore.
Sausages are mentioned in the
(writings of Greeks in the third
' century.