THE ALASKA FISHERMAN
Published the 15th of each month at Ketchikan, Alaska
BY
WILLIAM L. PAUL, ATTORNEY FOR THE
Alaska Native Brotherhood
Entered as second-class matter at the Post Office at
KETCHIKAN, ALASKA
SUBSCRIPTION PRICE $2.00 FOR TWELVE ISSUES
OUR PLATFORM:
ABOLISHMENT OF ALL TRAPS.
ALASKA FOR ALASKANS.
FULL TERRITORIAL GOVERNMENT.
ONE NATION, ONE LANGUAGE, ONE FLAG.
“Be ye not as the horse, or as the mule,
Whieh have no understanding;
Whose mouth must be held in with bit and bridle,
Else it will not come near unto thee.” Ps: 32d
CAN ANY GOOD COME OUT OF
CORDOVA?
The rounding up of a desperate gang of boot
leggers by the Assistant District Attorney at
Cordova, a gang which included in its member
ship, city councilmen, city policemen, and a
deputy United States Marshal serves to call pub
lic attention to the low state of morals and abso
lute disregard for law, order and common
decency that characterizes the men who pose and
act as leaders socially and politically in the Gug
genheim country.
We hold no brief for defense of the Guggen
heims but we do feel that the curse of this great
company in its Alaska operations is and has been
the unprincipled leaches that have attached
themselves to the township project, a project
with which the Guggenheims are said to have
no connection. Unfortunately for the Guggen
heim investment these leaches have always
shoved themselves into the spotlight of publicity
that has shone on the railroad and mining pro
ject until all violations of law and outrages of
decency eminating from the Cordova ganlg are
wrongfully attributed to the Guggenheims.
Since the inception of the Guggenheim railroad
investment these leaches have thrived on side
lines of graft, debauchery, iniquity and even
homicide and a name honored in the commercial
world has had to bear the odium for which it is
not responsible.
It has been most unfortunate for Eastern in
vestors in the great Copper River mining and
railroad venture that individuals who had no part
in the investment should have by their lawless
ness and general iniquity placed a stigma upon
the name of the principal investors that cannot
be removed.
The dastardly murder of inoffensive men who
had no means of defending themselves while be
ing shot down like dogs in the Keystone Canon,
the stuffing of ballot boxes along the linle ‘of
the Copper River Railroad, the establishment and
maintenance of the industry of prostitution on ai>
elaborate scale in the town of Cordova and other
crimes and offenses against decency were not
properly attributable to the Guggenheims, but
to the same gang that now thrives on disregard
and disrespect for the constitution of the United
States.
There is no moral, social or statutory law which
these morons respect and why the law-abiding
patriotic element of the citizenry of Cordova
continues to stand for the dominance of this un
desirable class in the social and political life of
their city is beyond the comprehension of the
decent citizens of the Territory.
When President Roosevelt shut off the coal and
forest graft of the Cordova gang it immediately
sent up a howl for vengeance against Gifford
Piifcchot and every man who participated in their
discomfiture.
The gang went on record strdng against con
servation by the reservation system. Today it is
shouting for the fishery reservation which pro
vides them the same chance for exploitation and
grabbing up of public resources that Mr. Pin
chot’s reservation denied them. We intend in the
near future to publish the record of protests
against reservation made by the Cordova gang
in the past in order that the public may see
the inconsistency and hypocricy of the gang’s
demand for fishery reservations.
YES, A GOOD THING CAN COME
OUT OF CORDOVA.
We are inclined to believe that “no good thing
can come out of .Cordova” if it comes from the
gang that has controlled that community iri the
past, but we now make an exception in the per
son of the esteemed and Honorable Frank Foster.
We suppose he will file for and that he will be
the representative to the Legislature again, and
so we reprint that “poem’ ’that many have in
formed us described his work during the last
term nicely:
If you ask what place he hails from,
We’ll say, in uncouth rhyme,