The Chitina Leader
CH1TIXA, ALASKA.
Entered as second-class matter, November 12, 1910, at the postoffice at
Chitina, Alaska, under the Act of Congress of March 3, 1879.
ONLY NEWSPAPER IN CHITINA
Published every Saturday by
WHL A. STEEL—Editors, Managers and Proprietors—HARRY o. STEEL
Office: Hotel Chitina Building. Cordova Office: Daily Alaskan
Seattle Office: B51 Colman Building.
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Made known upon application. They will be found reasonable for the service
given. Official publication for legal advertisements pertaining to mineral lands
of the Copper River district.
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CHITINA, ALASKA, SATURDAY, MARCH 9, 1912.
THE ALASKA RAILROAD BILL
The first step toward carrying into effect the President’s
recommendation for the construction of a railroad line in Alas
ka, from Resurrection Bay to the Tanana, has been taken with
the introduction in the House of a bill to create a commission
of three men to visit Alaska and investigate routes from the
seaboard to various coal fields and interior navigable rivers.
On the surface it would appear that there is fair prospect
of the passage of the bill. The present Congress can hardly
be persuaded into adopting any permanent policy in the mat
ter of Alaska. Members are not anxious to commit themselves
on any phase of the subject, at least until after the Presidential
election is over; and the Alaskans have no votes to be concili
ated. *
To pass the present bill will give at least a plausible pre
text that Congress is willing to do something for Alaska, and
is only awaiting full information. The whole subject can then
be put aside until after the commission reports.
If this is the best that Alaska can get at this session it
will at least be something to encourage hope, although it sets
the day when permanent relief will be afforded off into the
future- At that, it is hard to criticise severely a proposal to
have the subject investigated before final action, notwithstand
ing the fact that the subject has been fairly well investigated
by various agents of the government, whose reports are on filt
and open to any member of Congress who cares to read them.—
Post-Intelligencer.
--oooo
pt- THE REFUSAL OF COFFEE
A question of verbal construction seems to have precipitated
itself into politics with confusing results to some minds. If.
declares one shade of opinion, a man says, “No, 1 will take no
more coffee,” it does not mean that he will never drink cof
fee again and does not prohibit him from drinking coffee the
next morning.
Unquestionable, so far as it goes. But. if the man says;
“The wise custom of abstaining from the use of coffee regards
the substance and not the form, and under no circumstances
will I ask for or accept any more coffee;” and on the next
morning, when offered coffee, repeats the declaraton and adds
“I have not changed and shall not change the decision thus
announced,” and should the next day after that accept anti
drink coffee, the legitimate inference would be that he hac
fallen off the anti-coffee wagon with considerable promptitude.
-oooo
i NEW EMPLOYERS’ LIABILITY
4 '
The President’s recent message on employers’ liability
transmits to Congress the report of the Employers’ Liability
Commission and the bill which it proposes and which the Pres
ident recommends. The bill abolishes for the commerce undei
the jurisdiction of the United States the common-law defenses
of contributory negligence, assumption of risk and fellow ser
vants’ negligence; provides for arbitration, official or volun
tary, with the right of either party to demand a jury; makes
the element of damages a factor to be recognized in the regu
lation of rates, and fixes the rates for damages either for in
juries or death by percentages of the wages received by the
employe.
The bill proceeds on the theory that any' employ'e injured
in the discharge of his duty after serving fourteen days is en
titled to relief, and that the suffering and disablement entailed
by the injuries are so paramount that no employe will be led
to carelessness by' the provided compensation; that the em
ploye is entitled to recover what he needs without unreason
able delay; that both parties should have the benefit of a fixed
measure of damages, and that the railroad is entitled to have
the cost of such a system recognized as a part of the operating
expenses.
-oooo-:•,
A RAPID AWAKENING IN THE EAST
A wider knowledge of the real trouble with Alaska is be
ing shown by many Eastern newspapers- For example, the
Brooklyn Eagle, commenting upon the coal famine in this ter
ritory', says: “The plight of Nome is the result of execrably
bad governmental policy. In the first place, we have denied
Alaska control of her own affairs, such as Anglo-Saxons have
a right to expect. In the second place, we have played poli
tics to the extent of preventing private capital from develop
ing Alaska’s coal fields. In the third place, we have failed to do
anything, through governmental agencies, toward mining and
transporting coal to where it is needed.” When such clear and
sane understanding of the actual conditions in Alaska and the
reasons therefor are shown in the East, the prospects for relief
for Alaska are certainly growing better.
-oooo
Another big snow rotary has arrived, at a cost of $25,000,
and additional assurance is given of the ability of the officials
of the Copper River & Northwestern Railway to keep theii
tracks clear of snow slides and have trains run on schedule
time for the balance of the winter.
■V. _f . -M. . H X . .
KOHLER’S POLICY IS NOT HEALY’S POLICY
Chief of Police Kohler of Cleveland sends out some addi
tional statistics illustrating by comparison the results of what
has been called the Golden Rule, but which he prefers to cal!
the Common Sense Policy of making arrests bv policemen.
This policy is based on the contention that many arrests are
made by policemen unnecessarily and should not be made r •
less the officer is “satisfied that you have the necessary evi
dence to convict or, in felony cases, to detain.”
The statistic light on this case is furnished by comparing
the arrests before the adoption of this policy with those when
it was more or less in force. In 1906 and 1907 the arrests in
Cleveland were 31,736 and 30,418, respectively. In the next
four years they sank to from one-tliird to one-fifth that num
ber. The very general imposition of what Mr. Kohler regards
as the greatest injustice is illustrated by the fact that even in
the year when the total arrests were very much reduced, about
half were, after arrest and imprisonment in police cells, dis
charged without any penalty.
It certainly seems a reasonable contention that so large a
number of arrests in which the courts did not deem it neces
sary to inflict any penalty must—except on the hypothesis of
criminal laxity by the police magistrates—imply the infliction
of disgrace and hardship on many innocent people. It is not
quite clear how fully we can rely on the average patrolman to
use infallible judgment on the point whether arrests are need
ed. But we certainly cannot regard as unreasonable Mr. Koh
j ler’s urgent requirement of police officei's “to make every pos
(sible injuirv so as not to place any person in prison” without
i prima facie evidence of offenses that require exemplary penal
ties.
A similar inquiry upon the part of many deputy United
States marshals throughout Alaska, and particularly in the
Cliitina precinct, might be made with beneficial results. This
idea of intimidating a citizen or throwing him into jail on
some flimsy pretext, simply because he fails to kow-tow to the
big boss in charge of the precinct, is scarcely American—but
I then good Americans do not countenance any such methods.
They appeal more particularly to the alien Ilealy class. With
him a man’s most serious offense is in questioning the right of
a U. S. commissioner to absolutely run the entire public and
private affairs of a community. But there is sure to be an end
i to all such despicable practices, and we Alaskans are a patient
people, although sorely tried.
-oooo
CONSERVATION OF SALMON
At the approaching territorial conventions resolution will
undoubtedly be adopted calling upon Congress to take proper
protective measures to conserve the Alaska salmon and to in
crease the tax that is exacted from the companies that are de
pleting the supply. On this subject the Post-Intelligencer re
cently states:
“The manner in which this question of the salmon supply
is handled by the federal government in Alaska, as contrasted
with the manner in which the same question is handled by the
State of Washington, should be a sufficient evidence, to any
one who cares to become informed, that state or local authori
ties are very much more competent to handle the whole matter
of the conservation of natural resources than the federal gov
ernment by any possibility can be—that is, if conservation be
considered as a matter of permanent utilization, without de
structive waste; not merely non-user.
“Alaska and Washington are the great sources of supply
of canned salmon, a food which now enters into the diet of na
tions in all parts of the world. The salmon output of Alaska
equals or exceeds in market value the output of gold of that
territory. The supply of Washington is slightly less in annual
value. The salmon canning industry in Alaska extends along a
coast line of thousands of miles. That in Washington is all
confined to a relatively small district, easily under observation
at all times.
“In Washington the state alone maintains some twenty
three fish hatcheries, and keeps far more men employed in see
ing that the laws are enforced, within the limited area covered
by the salmon fishing operations, than the federal government
does over the thousands of miles of the Alaska coast. The
state has checked the decline and has actually increased the an
nual supply of fish. In Alaska, where originally the supply
was enormously greater than anything ever known in this
state, the salmon are threatened with extinction, because of the
lack of proper laws, properly enforced, and proper methods of
replenishing the supply. In the state, it is a matter of intimate
domestic concern. For Alaska, the subject must be handled, if
at all, by a Congress indifferent to and ignorant of the whole
subject.”
-oooo
I' airbanks, with a population of 3,541 within the corporate
limits of the municipality, easily x'anks first in size among the
towns of Alaska. Nome is a far-removed second with 2,600
residents within the city walls. Douglas with 1,722, Juneau
with 1,644 and Ketchikan with 1,613, run pretty does in the
race for third place. As an illustration of how the mighty have
fallen, the census for 1900 gives the population of Nome as 12,
488, while Skagway, which in 1910 by the census harbored 872
souls, was in 1900 as large in population as Fairbanks is to
day.—Fairbanks Times.
-oooo
When you hear a man sneering at the local paper because
it is not as big, cheap and newsy as the big city papers, you can
safely bet he does not spend any of his wealth in assisting to
make it better, and that generally the paper has done more for
him than he has for it. The man who cannot see the benefits
arising from a local newspaper is just about as much value to a
town as a delinquent tax list.—Douglas News.
-oooo--—
.Tom Lawson is worried about where the fool of the future
is going to get his money from. But there will be enough to last
out Tom’s time, anyway.
If all the Republicans are to be divided into neurotics and
paranoiacs, we presume the Democrats will be satisfied to be
classed as plain loonies, without scientific embellishment.
THE INITIATIVE DECISION
The absurd attempt to knock out the initiative and refer
endum on the theory that it is unconstitutional has been re
buffed by the United States Supreme Court. This was the fate
predicted for it when that Oregon utility corporation carried
the issue to the highest court on the fantastic plea that a tax
imposed by the state was void because the state in adopting the j
initiative and referendum has violated the constitutional re-1
quirement of a republican form of government. Every sensible!
person knows that this requirement meant a republican as dis-!
tinguishe^ from a mpnarchial form of government, and that!
the addition of the initiative and referendum in no way affect
ed that distinction.
The supreme tribunal hjas disposed of the plea by declar
ing it has no jurisdiction, that the question of whether a state
has or has not a republican form of government as required
by the constitution is a political matter for congress to decide
when admitting senators aijd representatives—a political is
sue with which the court has nothing to do- Had the corpora
tion asserted that the tax was illegally levied or confiscatory,
that would have been a justifiable question for the court to pass
upon; but the political ^uest^on of the form of government was
for the political branch of the government and not for the ju
dicial, to determine.
In announcing this unanimous decision, quoting opinions
by Chief Justices Taney and Fuller, Chief Justice White said
it was a singular minconception of the nature and character of
our government to suggest thjat this distinction between the po
litical and justiciable issues tends to destroy the duty of the
judiciary in proper cases to etaforce the constitution. The legis
lative duty to determine po itical questions and the judicial
duty to enforce the applicable provisions of the constitution as
to the exercise of governmental power were very clear. They
will now, however, be clearer those who have been forgetting
the co-ordinate authority of {he governmental branches.
-—--finnn—_
again oil Replaces coal
The Nome Nugget, is taking a philosophical view of the coal
shortage which exists on thd Seward peninsula. In comment
ing on the matter it says:
Although it is a little premature at this time to refer to
the coal shortage as a blessing in disguise, and will subject
ourselves to being criticised fbr not calling it a blessing in dis
gust, still we will take the chance, for should no suffering re
sult, and we are able to make jthe coal hold out until the arrival
of the boats in the spring, tjien indeed will it be a blessing.
Whj ? xvot a woman’s but a mechanic’s reason for the problem
of burning crude oil will havb been solved and a cheaper fuel
given the people.
A strict watch should be maintained by the members of
the fire department to have experiments kept within due
bounds, to preserve the town and prevent any conflagration
from getting a start, and between now and spring with the
able mechanics in our midst we will have worked out the com
plicated problem of burning Crude oil, that will prove a bless
ing in disguise.
“Fuel oil is the coming heat producing unit of the camp,
and it required a coal shortage to bring the proper introduction
of it about, so one and all while practicing economy can have
the satisfaction of knowing this particular handicap is work
ing out for the best, and the Ultimate result will be of a bene
ficial nature to all those who have to remain with the camp, or
those who stay trying to tenant a smile from fickle Dame For
tune. ” »
- - ... _i_
* ' • 3V<— -< | . ••
WHEN COMING TO'CORDOVA REMEMBER
Cordova SUam Laundry
THE ONLY REAL ^LAUNDRY IN TOWN
-V • - j
het us wash and clean your canvass covers, blankets, clothes,
overalls, etc.
If you are In * hnfry we can do your work in an hour’s time if
necessary.
Leave your work at any hotel, rooming house or barber shop
and it will receive prompt attention.
Secon<l Street
ALASKA STEAMSHIP COMPANY
Fast and commodioub steamers sailing between
Cordova and Seattle, via 'INSIDE PASSAGE, stop
ping at KETCHIKAN aind JUNEAU.
Sails from Seattle— Sails from Cordova—
March 1...NORTHWESTERN.....March 9
March 8.......ALAMEDA.••.... March 1(>
This company reserves the light to change schedule of steam
ers without notice.
tickets on sale at Up-towta office Alaska Steamship Bldg.
Baggage or freight will not be received at dock later than one
hour before sailing time.
R. J. BARRY, THOMAS TALLENT,
General Agent , Ticket Agent.
Alaska Coast Co.
“THE INSIDE ROUTE.”
To Juneau and Prince Wllliaih Sound Ports and Southwest
ern Alaska.
Seattle Sailing dates:
BERTHA:—March 20, April 20, May 20.
SAMPSON—March 27, April 15, May 5.
The JEANNIE carries explosives for Southwestern Alaska, anr
goes to Kodiak.11
Righi reserved to change steamers and sailing dates without
ALASKA TRANSFER CO., Local Agents.
B. F. WATSON General Ag'eht.
. . . .V... . . . . .
Horse Shoeing
and Repairing
J. 0. PEASQN
At Chamberlain’*' feec &
sale stable.
Chitina
Pharmacy
4-44 444444 4 444444444 444
THE DAYLIGHT STORE
44444444444444444 4-f 444
DRUGS
STATIONERY
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MAGAZINES
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PUBLIC LAND AND MINING
CASES.
If you are interested in any contest
or any matter before the Interior De
partment, write to Clark & Wright,
registered land lawyers, ooa F Street
N. W. (opposite Gcn’l Land Office),
Washington, D. C. Free information
about contests and where to obtain
scrip, locatafcle upon public lands,
without residence or cultivation.
D. A. GRIFFIN,
DENTIST
All work guaranteed. Trices reason
able. In Tibbs’ Building.
Chitina, Alaska.
I Has opened under the new '
management of Clemment & S
Lund.
OPEN DAY AND NIGHT
Meals Served at All Hours.
Come and see us and get a j
square.
LUMBER
Hay «fc Grain
We can give you lowest
rates in carload lots or less
0- A. NELSON & COMPANY,
Chitina, Alaska.
Chitina Bakery
& Coffee House
GESSNER & STANGNETH
Proprietors
FRESH BREAD
Cakes and Pastry
Always on Hand
Main Street, — Chitina.
Pete’s Lodging
House
and
SECOND HAND STORRE
FREE COOKING HOUSE
CHiiiNA HEIGHTS
R links 25c; Reds 50c.
PETER CORUES, Prop,