FALSE REPORT
FROMJANANA
Telling Stampeders to Beware of
the Road Tax Collector
It was talked around town Tuesday
that some erratic person had sent a tel
egram to Fairbanks advising Iditarod
stampeders not to land at Tanana, saying
-that transients wrere being held up here
by the road-tax collector.
If such a telegram was sent the act
was reprehensible in the extreme. Tran
sient persons have not been obliged to
pay road tax, nor will they be.
When questioned regarding the mat
ter Road Overseer Frank Smith said it
is his intention to enforce the law as
fully and impartially as possible, but
that he has collected no tax from tran
sients and has no intention of doing so.
Several messages were dispatched to
Fairbanks contradicting the alleged false
report.
One thing that has developed from
the discussion thus started is a cer
tainty that there is a wide difference of
opinion as to the applicability of the
law. It is freely asserted that there is
high official sanction for collecting the
tax or enforcing the required work from
any person coming under the scope of
the law, no matter at what place in the
territory such person may happen to be
found. Such a construction of the law
would be unjust, and does not accord
with the wording of the act, which pro
vides that—
Road overseers of the different precincts
are authorized, and it is made their duty, to
warn out all male persons between eighteen
and fifty years of age who have resided thir
ty days in the district of Alaska, who are
capable of performing labor on roads or
trails, and who are not a precinct charge, to
perform two days’ work of eight hours each
in locating, constructing, or repairing pub
lic roads or trails, UNDER THE DIREC
TION OF THE ROAD OVERSEER WITHIN
WHOSE PRECINCT THEY MAY RESPECT
IVELY RESIDE, or furnish a substitute to
do the same, or pay the sum of four dollars
per day for two days* labor, and said road
overseer shall receipt for the same, etc.
The meaning of the law is there made
clear that the tax shall be collected and
applied in the precinct wherein the per
son liable is resident, and it is reasona
ble that it should be so—else certain
precincts, like Fairbanks for instance,
where large numbers of persons go on
court and other business, would have
power to rob, not the road tax payers
directly, but the precincts to which the
tax justly belongs.
While Overseer Smith as a matter of
fact is not collecting tax from transients,
as a matter of lawful right he has no
power to do so.
For the Independent Fleet.
The handsome new slip lately com
pleted in front of the Tanana Commer
cial Company’s store is for the accom
modation of the independent fleet, of
which the company has been appointed
agent.
The street has been graded and grav
eled in the vicinity of the slip, so that
that section of the waterfront has a
business-like appearance nowadays.
She is truly a misguided woman who
drinks in order to share her husband’s
loads. _
Hon. James Wickersham will come to
Alaska immediately upon the adjourn
ment of congress.
Patriotic Jap..
Resident of Tanana is Proud of
His Country’s Prowess and the
Attention Given It by an Arti
cle in a Magazine.
Any good American appreciates genu
ine patriotism, and that is the kind
possessed by Harry Yokota, a Japanese
resident at Tanana. A few days ago
Harry showed the Leader the leaves of
a magazine, carefully pinned together,
containing an illustrated article byCapt.
Richmond Pearson Hobson, titled “If
War Should Come!” He admired the
pictures and was proud of the high es
teem in which Captain Hobson holds
the Japanese as lighting men. With
caution not to let it be destroyed, Harry
left the article with the Leader, with
the remark that perhaps some of It
would be found worthy of reproduction.
Reviewing Japan’s strength, Captain
Hobson declares that it behooves the
white nations to understand the mean
ing of that country’s rise in power
through victorious handling of the
weapon’s of war. The presence of su
perior power is absolutely necessary, he
says, to cheek the natural course of that
nation toward war with foreign powers,
now that war within her own body has
ceased as a result of the union of the
feudal lords behind the Mikado
The supreme duty of America, Cap
tain Hobson continnes, is to gauge accu
rately the possibilities of Japan’s mili
tary power and to make that power
ineffectual by the provision of an un
questionably superior force. No other
thing that our government can do would
have so powerful an influence for the
establishment of justice and the main
taince of peace in international relation
ships.
Of course all general readers are more
or less familiar with Captain Hobson’s
ideas regarding the matters here named,
but the Leader had not read this par
ticular article before, and Mr. Yokota
is hereby tendered the paper’s.cordial
thanks for it.
IDITAROD TRADERS
BETTER LOOK OUT
(Fairbanks News-Miner.)
Some of the business men and others
who are going to the Iditarod to open up
business houses will find themselves in
trouble on their arrival there unless they
take time by the forelock and secure
licenses for the transaction of business
prior to their leaving this town. Other
wise the marshal and the commissioner
wcill put a peremptory stop to the sale
of goods.
From Seattle comes reports of various
ones coming in with big stocks of goods,
a $100,000 shipment of liquors being
mentioned, but it is a cinch that not
much of that liquor can get loose for a
few months, as the application for a
liquor license must be first passed upon
by the marshal and then by the court,
and by the time the Seattle shipper gets
around to the realization of that fact
after he has landed his stock, he will
find that Judge Lyons has left the dis
trict.
Clerk of the Court E. H. Mack ad
vises all those who are going to take
stocks of goods into the new camp to
procure their licenses before leaving and
thus avoid trouble.
THE PLACE TO EAT
KENTUCKY RESTAURANT
Best of Everything Served
BENJ. GREEN and J. A. FREDERICKSON, Props.
Headquarters for the Traveling Public
Pioneer and Tower Houses
Two First-class Resorts
Stables for Horses and Dogs. Warm Bunkhouse
where you can dry your clothing and sox
Joe Anicich, Prop.
Tanana, Alaska
Autobiography of Mark Twain.
No outside papers have been received
here since the death of Mark Twain. It
is known that he was preparing an au
biography, which it is presumed will be
published without much delay. Of it
he said three years ago: “This autobi
ography of mine does not take from my
life its showy episodes, but deals mainly
in the common experiences which go to
make up the life of the average human
being, because those episodes are of a
sort which he is familiar with in his own
life, and in which he sees his own life
reflected and set down in print.
“Howells was here yesterday after
noon,” continued Mr. Clemens, quoting
from the autobiography, “and I told
him the whole scheme of this autobiog
raphy and its apparently systemless
system—only apparently systemless, for
it is not really that. It is a deliberate
system, and the law of the system is
that I shall talk about the matter which
for the moment interests me, and cast
it aside and talk about something else
the moment its interest for me is ex
hausted. It is a system which follows
no charted course and is not going to
follow any such course. It is a system
which is a complete and purposed jum
ble—a course which begins nowhere,
follows no specified route, and can never
reach an end while I am alive, for the
reason that, if I should talk to the ste
nographer two hours a day for a hun-1
dred years, 1 should still never be able
to set down a tenth part of the things
which have interested me in my life
time. I told Howells that this autobi
ography of mine would live a couple of
thousand years, without any effort and
would then make a fresh start and live
the rest of the time.
“He said he believed it would, and
asked me if I meant to make a library
of it.
“I said that that was my design; but
that if I should live long enough the set
of volumes could not be contained mere
ly in a city, it would require a state, and
that there would not be any multimill
ionaire alive, perhaps, at any time dur
ing its existence who would be able to
buy a full set, except on the installment
plan.
“Howells applauded, and was full of
praises and endorsement, which was
wise in him and judicious. If he had
manifested a different spirit, I would
have thrown him out of the window. I
like criticism, but it must be my way.”
Discussing genealogy in general and
his own in particular, he goes on to tell
a story about the late William Walker
Phelps, whom he met when Phelps was
minister at the court cf Berlin.
“One evening he had me to dinner to
meet Count S., a cabinet minister. This
nobleman was of long and illustrious
descent. Of course I wanted to let out
the fact that I had some ancestors, too;
but I did not want to pull them out of
their graves by the ears, and I never
could seem to get the chance to work
them in in a way that would look suffi
ciently casual. I suppose Phelps was in
the same difficulty. In fact, he looked
distraught, now and then—just as a per
son looks who wants to uncover an an
cestor purely by accident and cannot
think of a way that will seem accidental
enough. But at last, after dinner, he
made a try. He took us about his draw
ing room, showing us the pictures, and
finally stopped before a rude and an
cient engraving. It was a picture of the
court that tried Charles I. There was a
pyramid of judges in Purttan slouch
hats, and below them three bareheaded
secretaries seated at a table. Mr. Phelps
put his finger upon one of the three and
said with exulting indifference:
“ ‘An ancestor of mine.’
“I put my finger on a judge and re
torted with scathing languidness:
“ ‘Ancestor of mine. But it is a small
matter. I have others.’
“It was not noble in me to do it. I
have always regretted it since. But it
landed him.”
Tanana’s Wooden Hen.
The wooden hen has reached Tanana
at last. It is now brooding an embryotic
flock of fifty-four chicks for the yard of
George Vautier.
Of course the “hen” is somewhat of a
novely to an old sourdough but there
is nothing so all-fired complicated about
it. A lamp attachment furnishes the
required heat, which the hen automat
ically adjusts to the proper degree.
Mr. Vautier keeps the lamp trimmed
and burning and turns the eggs morn
ings and evenings, and the hen does the
rest.
While contraptions of this sort are
comparatively new to people of the
present day, Herodotus tells us that
they were known in Egypt back in the
earliest recorded times.