TANANA LEADER
Issued every Thursday.
Sam J. Callahan.Publisher
Subscription.—One year, $ 10; six months,
one month, $1; single copies, 25 cents.
Advertising.—Rates on application. Right
reserved to reject any advertisement.
Thursday, August 4, 1910.
___^————
FOB DELEGATE
JAMES WICKERSHAM
SMALL COMMUNITIES AND THEIR
CLAIM FOR ROADS.
In the Leader today is printed a letter
bearing the date of Wiseman, Koyukuk
district, June 24. The envelope en
closing the letter is postmarked Betties,
June 25, and Tanana, July 28, it having
actually arrived at Tanana between the
hours of 4 and 5 o’clock p. m. on the
last-named date. A perusal of the letter
itself will give evidence of lack of mail
communication that would be laughable
if it did not imply such serious conse
quences to the people of that northern
district.
For eighteen years the Koyukuk has
been a considerable producer of gold,
and for more than ten years, under the
hardest and costliest kind of living
and working conditions, it has main
tained a population of from 150 to 250.
The most competent men who possess
a general knowledge of interior Alaska
believe the district offers a field for
quartz development superior to any
other section of the country, and the
placer possibilities are at least as great
as in any part of the territory.
Under the circumstances it is some
what remarkable that the district has
not been provided with a better mail
service, to say nothing of roads and
trails; for even now, with nothing more
than a few blazed trees to facilitate
travel, the distance between Tanana
and Wiseman can be covered on horse
back in much better average time than
is made in the open-river mail service.
The Koyukuk and Tanana have paid
into the Alaska road fund enough money
to have constructed at least a passable
winter and summer wagon road from
Tanana to Arctic City. Seventy-five per
cent, of the license money collected in
the town of Tanana and in the Koyukuk
district for the past five or six years has
gone to build roads, nearly all of which
was expended directly for the benefit of
incorporated cities which pay nothing
into the road fund. The only benefit
the Koyukuk has received from all this
money consists of a few blazes on trees
and a limited number of stakes set in
the snow as a guide to winter travelers.
Tanana has received no more, for the
piece of trail between Tanana and Hot
Springs is part of a military and post
road constructed from general appropri
ations made by congress.
A year and some months ago Tanana
co-operated with the Koyukuk in peti
tioning for the opening of a trail north
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ward from Tanana into the Koyukuk
district, but the improvement was op
posed at Fairbanks and the petition was
of no avail. Fairbanks, meantime, is
kowtowing to the head of the road com
mission and calling for more appropria
tions.
In the spring of 1909 when Tanana
was asking that some of its own money
be applied to opening up the country to
the northward a Fairbanks paper (the
Tribune, w hich afterward died not know
ing the nature of its ailment) secured
and printed under a scare head an arti
cle from one Dofllemyre, saying “The
Gibbon crowd are acting from a selfish
motive, but I presume the road commis
sion will consider all this.” And we
presume the road commission did.
In order to get at the merits of this
road question it is necessary to dif
ferentiate between military and post
roads and roads intended primarily for
use by the people. “An act to provide
for the construction and maintenance of
roads, the establishment and mainten
ance of schools, and the care and sup
port of insane persons in the District of
Alaska, and for other purposes,” ap
proved Jan. 27, 1905, was intended to
furnish means for building roads for
the people’s use. The nature of the act
was such that the roads were to be built
from license moneys collected outside of
incorporated- towns. It was a fair
presumption that they would be built
for the benefit and in accordance with
the wishes of the people paying for
them. The work was to be under the
supervision of the Alaska road commis
sion, and in the earlier days of its ex
istence that body tacitly acknowledged
the local application of the law by ask
ing the different communities to supple
ment the funds collected from them un
der the law by contributions from their
own private means. The military roads
are a different proposition, to be built
by funds included in the army appro
priation bill.
Tending to show that congress takes
this view of the matter, attention is
directed to the following facts:
Jan. 10 last the house of representa
tives was in committee of the whole
considering the army appropriation bill.
A paragraph was read proposing an ap
propriation of $150,000 for the “con
struction and maintenance of military
and post roads, bridges and trails,” and
specifying that the money should be
expended conformably to the provisions
of the act of 1905. Mr. Macon of Ar
kansas raised a point of order and was
sustained by the chairman. Mr. Hull
of Iowa then offered in lieu of the lan
guage stricken out the following: “For
repairs and maintenance of military
post roads, bridges and trails in the Dis
trict of Alaska, $100,000.”
The Chairman: Accepting the statement
of the gentleman from Iowa [ Mr. Hull ],
chairman of the committee on military af
fairs, and the proposer of the amendment,
that these improvements which this amend
ment proposes to maintain and repair were
built by the government and paid for, not
out of the Alaska fund provided by the act
of 1905, but out of moneys appropriated in
general appropriation acts by congress, and
paid out of the general treasury, the chair
BILLIARDS POOL
Fine Liquors and Cigars
THE GRAN
CHARLES CHANQUIST, Prop.
Tanana Alaska
i
thinks that this amendment may be sus
tained. This amendment does not, like the
original paragraph, refer at all to the act of
1905, which, as already shown, provided for
the construction of wagon roads and pack
trails to be paid for out of the Alaska fund,
composed of license taxes locally collected.
This amendment does not refer to such im
provements built under that act, but pro
vides for the maintenance of military and
pout roads, and so forth, already constructed
by the government out of funds appropri
ated by congress from the general treasury.
The chair therefore thinks the amendment
in order and overrules the point of order.
We do not believe it can be gainsaid
that as a matter of public policy it is
better that the richer and more popu
lous centers should contribute to the ad
vancement and development of the less
fortunately situated communities rather
than that the order should be reversed.
Aid extended to outlying districts is in
the interest of expansion and growth,
while to cause the little-developed re
gions to contribute heavily to the more
favored localities is to inaugurate a nar
rowing process. That is a proposition
true applied to the nation at large or to
any subdivision of it.
1 Stoddard Kay
’ THE
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For the good of Alaska at large, there
fore, as well as in justice to the people
who are applying their energies to open
ing up the outlying sections of the terri
tory, we believe that at least the money
paid by them should be applied for the
benefit of such outlying communities.
We believe the spirit and the letter of
the law contemplates this. But we
know, and every man who knows any
thing of road building as far as it has
progressed in Alaska knows, that the
smaller communities pay the taxes that
make up the Alaska fund, while the
large centers—the strongholds of the
great interests—get the bulk of the
roads. _
FOR THE SAKE OF ARGUMENT.
The Beveridge bill will be passed by
congress next winter. Wickersham will
be a member of congress next winter,
whether he is elected next month or not.
Even if he is not elected, he will have
three months more to fight for changes
in the bill, and after that we will not
need anybody to fight it.—Extract from
an editorial in the Fairbanks Weekly
Times, July 27.
Accepting, for the sake of argument,
the Times’s prophecy that the Beveridge
bill will be passed by congress next
winter, and the deduction that after
that we will not need anybody to fight
it, what, then, is the sum of the Times’s
contentions?
Surely if the passage of the bill is
inevitable, and we will after its passage
not need anybody to fight it, because we
will have to abide by it whether we like
it or not—by the same token we will
G. H. TIFFANY Building
St. James’ Mission
Holy Eucharist the Erst Sunday in each
mouth at 11 a. m. Each following Sunday,
Evening Prayer at 8 p. m. Every Wednes
day evening, Evening Prayer and Litany at
8 o’clock. WINTHKOP PEABODY,
Priest in Charge.
- .I—... , I.. <■ .I,
not need anybody there to defend it, or
to remain passive about it, or have any
thing to do or say regarding it. We will
not need any delegate there at all, at
least insofar as that particular bill is
concerned, according to the logic of the
Times.
There may be a few people who are
opposed to Alaska having a delegate to
congress at all. If so they should come
out in the open and say so: not try to
beg the question by putting forward a
straw man with the word Alaska
stamped upon it.
This is the last issue of the Leader
that will appear before the election. We
want to urge every man who is entitled
to do so to go to the polls and vote.
Vote according to your conscience and
better judgment, for the man you be*
lieve possesses the highest ideals and
will confer the greatest honor upon and
secure the most benefits for Alaska.