IDITAROD PIONEER
Published Every Saturday Evening at Iditarod, Alaska.
Vo' 3 Coo. M. Arbuckle. Publisher no. 43
SUBSCRIPTION flATES:
One Year .$10.001 One Month 1.00
Six Months . 5.00 | Single Copy. lln
Advertising; Ratos on Aonlication.
JsO'I THE RIGHT REMEDY
Fairbanks, Alaska, October 17, 1911.
Pioneer, Iditarod, Alaska:— Fairbanks Commercial Club pro
poses to address the following to the President, the cabinet and
congress:
‘‘One half of the total gold output of Alaska is
eaten up by transportation charges. This burden on
the mining industry would be reduced one half by a
system of good roads which would make it possible to
open mines in an immense area of territory which
cannot be touched because of the high cost of trans
portation. The growth of Alaska in industrial popu
lation depends upon good roads; the civil and com
mercial bodies o' Alaska therefore unite in requesting
congress to appropriate one million dollars annually
for the next live years in the improvement, construc
tion and maintenance of roads in Alaska, and request
the President to incorporate a recommendation for
such appropriation in his annual message.’’
Wire Times if you endorse or disapprove. TIMES.
The Pioneer has not the least desire to knock the Fair
banks Commercial Club or any other institution of that
city. Had the question not been squarely put to it the
Pioneer would not have meddled one way or the other in!
the scheme intended to benefit Fairbanks and Alaska. The
question being so put, however, it will be candidly admit
ted that this paper will make no effort to help the scheme
along. It would not know how to roast the President for
a refusal to recommend such an expenditure for such a pur
pose. nor how go about persuading a congressman to vote
for the proposed appropriation for roads while at the same
time standing pat against anybody touching the country’s
resources.
We believe the clamor for appropriations has done the
territory more harm than good. Such appropriations as
have been made were spent very largely with the purpose
of helping Fairbanks: yet Fairbanks, with all its natural
wealth and the favors it lias received from the federal gov
ernment, doesn't seem to be getting fat. Increasing the
dose would scarcely remove the cause of the patient’s
trouble. The first essential for the relief of the headache
that is felt by Fairbanks and other districts of Alaska is
the gianting to the people of the territory the ordinary
rights and privileges of American citizenship. When that
lias been accomplished robust health will follow.
IXJi'STICK MOST FLAGRANT
Ownership of public property by the government as trustee
for the people of Alaska and the United States, royalties on the
products and rentals for the land and leases long enough to attract
capital and assure it of a fair profit on the investment are the sole
means by which all the resources of Alaska can both be conserved
for future generations and be speedily and safely developed for
the benefit of the present generation.
The American people and the national government in Alaska
are in the position of a man who owns valuable real estate that he
does not wish to sell, but wants to have developed and make a
money maker. He leases it for a term of years on a fair valuation
and provides for renewals of the lease if changes in conditions
should render changes in the terms advisable. He makes the life
of the lease long enough to be attractive to investors. But he
keeps the ownership in his own hands and remains in a position to
take advantage of unforeseeable increases in the value of the
property.
The foregoing from the Spokane Spokesman-Review
is a concise statement of what the future holds for the
people of Alaska if the wishes of a certain class of people
Don't Get Lonesome
There Are StiH a Few of Us Left
IDITAROD HOTEL
First-Class Accommodations Your Patronage soiioited
Famous O^d Quaker Maid Rye
DRAUGHT BEER, DOMESTIC CIGARS
Good Music Every Evening
Fiat City=
FOOT OF WILLOW STREET. PHONE 76
JUST RECEIVED"
Summit SVBilitary Collar Shirts, Scotch Woo!
Sweaters, IrVSoccasins, Parkays, Etc.
HEADQUARTERS FOR
Hart, Schsf.'aer & Mars Clothing and Nnttletcn Shoes
S. GOLDSTEIN Tr^mto
A HOME-COOKED DINNER AT
The CT# w? ff^offee House,
£ssP k M From S to 7 p.m
Fofvl 7 <& Paterson, Prom.
C. J. Hurley, President J. P. Gleason, Vice President A Bruning, Cashier
Corner First Are, and Richmond St., Iditarod
General Banking Business Transacted Upon Liberal, But Conservative Lines
GOLD DUST PURCHASED UPON ASSAY VALUE
And we guarantee our assays against any of the government assay offices.
Clippings from your gold furnished you for lire purpose
of obtaining check assays if desired.
We solicit your business, and assure you of our courteous, prompt and
careful attention combined with fair treatment, whether
your account may be large or small.
w w Northern Conveniences
*LJ? AeP && Cammod ous Office
FLAT CITY Tel. 7 Large Drying Room
OISKA&ET MINERS' SUPPLIES A SPECIALTY
in the United States can be carried out. La Follette a
Republican of the so-called progressive brand, who aspires
to the Presidency, recently put the same proposition in a
slightly different form when he said Alaska ought to be
administered as if it were owned by a huge corporation
with all the people of the United States as stockholders.
President Taft will never sanction either the industrial or
political freedom of the territory.
The ideas of these people are not only revolutionary,
but are monstrously unjust. If they cannot be eliminated
from what is termed the Alaska problem the population of
the territory is bound to diminish and the development of
its resources be restricted to very narrow bounds. It would
be possible for either Socialistic rule or capitalistic rule, or
any other form of highly centralized power to mine the
easily accessible coal and ship it to the Outside markets;
but no such power will ever send men into the wilds to
search out and make known the resources that yet remain
untouched and hidden. Centralization is contraction; in
dividualism is expansion. And midway between the two
is the nearest approach to justice,as well as the most favor
able condition for progress. To illustrate: Individual ef
fort found gold in the Iditarod, where in centuries no
organized effort of a government or a corporation would
probably have looked for it; and when the gold was found
the combined effort necessary for taking it out and adding
it to the nation’s wealth followed speedily, naturally, and
independently of government or any power other than
that based on the gold in the ground in that particular
locality. If anybody on earth has just title to that gold it
is the men who were directly instrumental in finding it and
taking it out of the ground. That gold will have to go its
devious way to where conditions are different from what
they are here before it can become socialized. It is no more
the property of the people of the United States at large
than the gold in the vaults of the banks in New York city
| is the property of the people of Alaska at large. Neither
jean the people of the United States lay more just claim to
| the coal and other resources of Alaska than the people of
Alaska can to the coal and other resources of the United
States. The people of Alaska stand their full share of
the burden of the United States protective tariff without
getting anything back for protected industries. This tariff
tax alone has been estimated by statisticians and economists
to amount to 47 per cent, of the entire expenditure for nec
essaries by a region with no protected interests. Every
other mode of federal taxation applies to Alaska, besides
a system of federal license taxes that is excessive and that
is not borne by people in the United States. The coal is
withheld from use by executive order and the wood is taxed.
Transportation companies are taxed for landing goods on
the banks of streams where the government has done noth
ing toward providing dockage facilities. Business and en
terprise are hedged around by so many rules that there is
constant danger of violating some one of them and thereby
becoming subject to ruinous cases in court. A thousand
conditions are imposed on the people of Alaska that keep
persons of ordinary prudence from investing money in any
thing partaking of the nature of permanent improvement.
But there is no use to multiply words. The case of the
CHURCH SERVICES TOMORROW
Preaching service in the Com
missioner’s courtroom at 8 p m.
Mrs. Maher has taken chaige of
the choir and theie will be a good
musical program
Everybody cordially invited.
S. HA EE YOUNG,
Pastor
Play pool and solo at Ansluy's.
Get fly Fries Positively the Best Grades
os four Outfit i S,r ""
SAML. APPLEBAUM,
Wholesale Groceries and Outfitting
territory has gone beyond the stage where argument will j
do any good. Alaska is fortunate in one respect: it has a !
strong congressional delegate, and lie may be able to fight j
off the designs of the Taft administration through the next
session. That done, in all probability Alaska will have a
chance to appeal to a Democratic administration and a
Democratic congress, in which event Alaska’s case will not j
be utterly hopeless, although it will still be precarious.
—
AN OVERWORKED BOOMERANG
The boomerang is a peculiar instrument of warfare and
is always interesting on account of a habit it has of hitting
people in the rear. Whether an original wooden boomer
ang or the figure of speech that has sprung from it, the
back-hitting proclivity endures, and recently got in a pretty
good stroke on the Cordova Alaskan when that paper in
cluded the following paragraph in its leading editorial:
Through the publicity of the famous ‘‘Dick-to Dick” letter an
attempt was made not only to discredit the administration, but also
the Alaska Syndicate, but fortunately for the territory this canard
has proven a boomerang and been the means of informing the
people of the United States to what lengths these scandal mongers
are willing to go in order to injure a corporation that is doing more
for the development of A a ka than all other agencies AND
ALSO DEPRIVING THE RESIDENTS OF AN OPPORTUNITY
TO MAKE A LIVELIHOOD. YET SOME OF THESE SAME
PEOPLE HAVE THE EFI R INTERY TO SAY THAT THEY
ARE TRYING TO WORK OUT OUR SALVATION, WHILE
THEY HAVE A KNIFE JABBED INTO OUR BACK UP TO
THE HILT. _ _
PROPHECY
New York City has about 5,000,000 inhabitants. And the pop
ulation experts are figuring that if this rate of increase keeps up
the city of the Great White Way will hold 19,250,000 people by the
year 3950.
The deductions of the experts reminds us of Mark Twain’s
“scientific” treatise on the shortening of the Mississippi. That j
great river every now and then shortens itself bodily by cutting |
across some long bend. Of course it is slowly lengthening a bend
somewhere else all the time; but that fact escapes most observers,
and Mark deliberately disregarded it. He counted up the number j
of cutoffs which have occurred since historic knowledge of the river1
began, and figured that the stream lost an average of a mile and
three quarters per year. Assuming that it had done this in the
past and would continue doing it in the future, he proved triumph
antly that in “the Old Oolitic Silurian period, just 1,000,000 years
ago next November, the Mississippi was upward of 1,300,000 miles
long, and stuck out over the Gulf of Mexico like a fishing rod;”I
while 900 odd years hence it was equally clear that Cairo and New
Orleans would be only a mile and a half apart, by river, and would
doubtless get along with one mayor and board of aldermen between
them.
Precisely the same sort of “reasoning” from ridiculously in
sufficient data shows in most of these predictions of our future
growth in population.—Rocky Mountain News.
The Cordova Alaskan, in an editorial laudatory cf
President Taft, said '‘only those who are misled by the
shallow glitter of demagoguery or half-baked theories at
tempt to deny that he stands as firmly for the square deal
as the most vociferous champion it ever had.” Then the
President clinched the argument by making the Alaskan’s
editor postmaster.
...
President Taft merited the commendation of the Amer
ican people regardless of party when lie recently refused to
permit the white house cow, Pauline Wayne, to go on the
stage as an adjunct to a rural show.
The Ton family, consisting of 001 members, recently
filed a certificate of incorporation at Springfield, 111. To
borrow a former coast editor’s pet phrase, they ketched the
idee.
JUSTICE DEAD
Washington, October 14.—John
Marshall Harlan, associate justice
of the Supreme Court of the
United States, died here yesterday
of bronchitis.
J. M. Harlan was horn itr Boyle
Co., Kv., June r, 1833. and was
therefore in Iris 79th year. During
lhe Civil war he served in the
Union army as colonel. He took
his seat as assort r‘e justice ol the
Supreme Court December 10, 1877.
Save tire pieces I broken lenses re
placed at Simpson's.
Dr. Heinrich Wortniann,
Physician and Surgeon
Office at City Dmo Store, Tel. 3f>
First Are., Bet. Willow and Richmond
Office Hours- n to i, 3 to 4. 7 to 8
CH/IS. D. CARTER,
Offices, Pioneer Pru^ Stores.
Flat Creek
DR. F. W. HE RMS,
Dsn fist
Dr. Wortroann’s Office,
First Avenue and Willow Street
DR. H. BEHLA,
Gold St., Flat City, Opp. Grand lintel
1 ’hone 4
ALFRED E. MALT BY,
Attorney at Law
Notauy Public
Office Simpson BUbr, First and Willow
J. S. HARDING.
Law
Room 1. iditat’od Hotel
iDiTAttop, Alaska
CHAS. E. TAYLOR,
Attorney at Law,
Notary Public, Conveyancing,
Abstracts of Titles
flat City
Wickersham & Roden,
ATTORNEYS AT LAW
Iditarod. Alaska
E. COKE HILL,
Attorney at Law
M. A M. Bank Illdo. Iditarod. Alaska.
GEORGE WOODRUFF ALSRECHT,
Attorney at Law
Michigan. '31 Alaska. '10 Kentucky, 'SI
The Pioneer Attorney of this Camp
PIONEER R°*.
- Knik, A.asKa
Frank B. Cannon
: On the Seward Trail
| Cheapest and Best Place to Stop on the Road
BE!
Fairbanks. October 14.—Moss &
Kalenboru, of Independence creek,
are installing a dredge. Tliev
have purchased the plant formerly
used on Bonanza creek, Dawson.
This is now at Circle and is ex
pected to reach Chena before the
close of navigation.
BODY FOUND
Fairbanks, October 14. — The
body of Fred Corning, who com
mitted suicide a year ago, lias been
found in the slough a little below
the town. The Eagles have taken
charge of the remains, and the
funeral has been arranged for Sun
day.
We are here to stay—will be at the
old stand to make good anything infe
rior in quality, as everything sold is
guaranteed. Northern Commercial
Company.
Select Outside Lumber, cot rugated
iron and roofing paper at Ross & Nes
tor’s.
First Class in Fact First Ave„, Iditarod
BE MT TIE HOUSE
Furnished Rooms, Baih Rooms, Spring Cots Good Stables Adjacent
For Fresh
iPiTAROP MEAT GO.
Iditarod, Phone 15 Flat City, Phone 20
Fresh Mutton, Pork and Veal
Drink bastnm Bsnr
Miner’s Home Saloon
THE HOmToTthTiUAKER MAID”
Foot of Willow St., Iditarod