THE NOME NUGGET
Published Monday, Wednesday and Friday by the
NOMF PUBLISHING CO.
NOME. ALASKA
Telephone 443-2881 $1 50 PER MONTH
P.O. Box 610 $16.00 A YEAR
K. P. BOUCHER . Managing Editor
CLINTON GRAY . Production Manager
Entered at second class matter October 14, 1943, at the
post office at Nome. Alaska, under Act of March 3, 1879.
SOILED—-ONCE AGAIN!
Highway Week
THIS IS HIGHWAY WEEK, as proclaimed by Gov. Win. Egan,
signalling the starting of the biggest highway construction
year in the history of the state.
Alaska is far behind all the other states in its construction
having paid its share of taxes toward highways but not having
received highway monies while a territory’.
Highways are the lifeline to development in this vast state
and in no other part of the state is it more important than in
Northwestern Alaska, which is the biggest part of North America
which is not connected by road to the rest of the continent.
The building of the highway from the heart of Alaska to
Fairbanks and from the south forty-eight ter Fairbanks go hand
in hand with the development of those two areas of Alaska,
leaving the Panhandle and Northwestern Alaska far behind. The
Marine Highway will be the lifeline for the south and a road
from Anchorage or Fairbanks will be the most important step
forward for the Seward Peninsula in its history.
We commend the governor of Alaska in recognizing this
method of reminding everyone of the importance of the road
construction and his efforts to coordinate industry, labor, business
and civic organizations to cooperate in scheduling appropriate
programs for the dissemination of information on the highway
program.
V^E CLEANED UP OUR YARD, our neighbors cleaned up
their yards on Saturday and today the yards are all littered
again.
Unless the city sets out containers in which to put paper
sacks and empty cigarette packages and gum wrappers at stra
tegic places like the Drug Store and Glue Pot, cleaning the
yards is a lost cause.
Hospital News
Discharged: Lucy Trigg, Frank
Nunooruk, Nylin infant, Elizabeth
Avessuk and infant, Luceen Ap
passingok, Helen Nagaruk and boy,
Warren and A1 Olanna, Alice
Kugzruk, Dorothy Barr, Alvin Pok
rok, Lawrence Ahnangnatoguk.
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| RED CHINA REPORT: THE GAP
Editor’s Note — The people
of Rod China often confuse
glories promised for tomorrow
with the facts of today. The
result is an exaggerated claim
of industrial p mgr ess. Yet, there
have been gains. In this third
article in a special series, a
British author and poet who
just took a travel agency tour
of Red China tells how the
people behind the Bamboo Cur
tain feel agout what has been
accomplished to date.
By Richard P. Lister
PEKING IjP — They call the
Communist revolution in China the
liberation. The date is Oct. 1, 1949
when Mao Tze-Tung declared the
founding of tne Peoples’ Republic.
As of that date there was not
a single factory capable of making
needles and pins. So, at least, the
Chinese declare.
Now, they say, a very high pro
portion of consumer goods and
industrial equipment used in China
is home-made.
Whatever view may be taken of
the means used by the Chinese to
hoist themselves up — the harsh
ness of the system and its ruth
lessness toward many individual
lives — the achievement seems to
be real and impressive. To judge
the measure of its success, it is
only necessary to compare the pre
sent state of China, 14 years after
revolution, with that of Russia in
1931.
It is all the more peculiar, then,
that the Chinese do not always
seem content to let real achieve
ment speak for itself. They are so
full of the glories of tomorrow that
sometimes they confuse them with
the facts of today.
There’s a steelworks at Wuhan,
the unversity town on the Yangtze.
Begun in 1957, it now employs
40,000. It reminded me of the old
fashioned plant where I worked,
as a trainee graduate metallurgist
in England, in 1937-39.
There is nothing discreditable to
the Chinese in this. The Wuhan
Iron and Steel Co. may be 25
years behind the times but not so
long ago industrial China was 2,000
years behind. It did not exist at
all.
All the same, the Chinese are
not content. The planned output,
they told us, is three million tons
of steel a year. Very good; when
would this target be achieved?
This was one question they could
not or would not answer. When
pressed, they estimated the pre
sent output of this particular plant
at one and a half million tons. But
Also
SCHWINN BICYCLES
Sales & Service
GREENS
that didn’t matter; what counted
was the three million of tomorrow.
There were six open hearth
stel furnaces but only nos. 1 and
5 were working. This was a rather
low portion of the steelmaking
capacity. One answer for this
soon became apparent. The heavy
rolling mill, we were told, will
produce rails, girders, plate, sheet
and tubes.
They are proud of their rolling
mill but —it is not yet built.
Today the main output is pig iron
from the three blast furnaces and
cast iron, largely in the form of
parts for agricultural machinery.
Still, they do produce steel, bar,
rod and strip. And since they
started from scratch six years ago,
this is a miracle in itself.
Our travelling group encounter
ed this confusion between achieve
ment and future reality all over
China. At a children’s palace in
Shanghai — where middle school
children come after hours for the
usual cultural and recreational
activities with a strong ideo
logical tinge, we asked if they
were especially selected.
Of course not, we were told: All
children can come. Yet among the
hundreds there was not one who
did not wear the red neck scarf
of the pioneers, the Young Commu
nist Society.
There was no conscious decep
tion here. The Chinese really
wished to believe that the chil
dren’s palace was open to all, just
as they wished to believe that
every Chinese citizen is free to
choose his own work and to come
and go as he pleases. As with some
other peoples, what they tell
themselves three times is true.
I treasure the memory of our
visit to the Wuhan steel works not
only because it gave me a glimpse
into a fascinating aspect of the
Chinese mind but also because it
greatly increased my personal pres
tige.
At Wuhan, hobnobbing with the
open hearth men, I disclosed that I
once had been a steelworker my
self. Steelworker in China, like
poets, have considerable prestige.
At once, my status as the steel
worker-poet became unassailable.
The description of myself as a
former steelworker was perhaps
not absolutely accurate but it was
near enough. And I felt no twinge
of conscience about it; one good
gap between the ideal and the
reality deserves another.
Next: Children.
Exercise For Fitness
Army News Service present* toe fourth a »e for personnel
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assigned as specialists, staff personnel, and to TD ga *
Each article features one exercise for men JJJJJ£
The exercises are extracted from Department of th y
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cal Fitness Tests to be taken by the above mentioned personneL
The wfaiwmw acceptable standards for this weeks exercises are.
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R=Repetltlon
Letter To
The Editor
Dear Editor:
We have a problem down here
on the coast of Oregon that should
interest your readers. Perhaps they
can help us.
The Interior Department wants
to establish a sand dunes park in
this area. It would take in some
42.000 acres and cost about $30.
000,000 by the time Hwy. 101 is
relocated, as planned by the Na
tional Park Service.
The surprising part is that much
of the land is already held by
the U.S. Forest Service which has
developed it for recreation. But
some private land, containing 267
homes and 44 businesses would
also be turned back to wilderness.
Two excellent Oregon State Parks
—Honeyman and Umpqua Light
house—would be taken over by
the federal agency.
We know about your large wild
life refuges: Arctic National Wild
life Refuge of 8,000,000 acres;
Clarence Rhode with 1,800,000 and
Izenbek with 415,000. We under
stand that Clarence Rhode is the
only one that has been granted
funds.
People here don’t want the sand
park, knowing that efforts will be
made to expand it and take in all
private property in the area, cut
ting off school taxes and elimin
ating several hundred homes as
well as tree farms, businesses
and private property in general.
There is no need. There is no
vanishing seashore here.
No doubt Alaska could use the
$30,000,000 to much better ad
vantage. We suggest that you call
this to the attention of your
senators.
Cordially,
Jack Parker
Box 1033
Florence, Ore.
Woodrow Wilson had one of
the most meteoric rises in Amer
ican political history. Just two
years and 170 days after he was
nominated for governor of New
Jersey—his first public office—he
was sworn in as President of the
United States.
I
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