“100% Americans”
How many of us, born here or elsewhei i,
could qualify as “hundred per cent American?”
Scarcely one, because, in truth, there is no such
American. Listen to the words of a typical
western editor, that vigorous type of the Amer
ican who reads in the quiet seclusion of a small
town, who thinks and reaches his conclusions
with a careful perspective — much truer than
that of the man in a large city. That is the
real American. 1 am quoting now the editor
of the Rockville (Indiana) Tribune — a small
Main Street paper, if you will, but with an
editor wielding a trenchant pen and seeing
things with crystal-like clearness.
“There is no such thing as a ‘hundred per
cent American,’ ” says this American of the
true type. “Most of us are doing right well if
we can qualify as one-half per cent Americans!
What is a hundred per cent American? Let
us name a few things that none will deny as
being among the attributes that define a hun
dred per cent American, lie must first of all,
before considering his own rights, have a higher
regard for the rights of others; he must obey
the laws—not the laws he chooses himself to
obey and demands enforcement on others, but
ALL the laws. lie must never swear falsely
to a tax return; he must never run his auto
mobile on the public highway faster than the
speed laws declare; he must observe whatever
laws are made to preserve the sacredness of
the Sabbath; his daily life, and particularly his
nightly life, must be such as to cause his fellow
citizens to respect him as a man of high moral
ity. And above all, when it comes to casting
stones, he must himself be without sin.
“To be ‘one hundred per cent American’ a
man must be one hundred per cent Christian.
He must always and everywhere observe the
Golden Rule. He must put in practice the
percepts of the Sermon on the Mount. In all
sacred and profane history there never lived
but one Man who could qualify as a hundred
per cent American; and men w'ho deny or
abridge the rights of others for religion or
race should remember that that Man was a
Jewr.”—Edward Bok.
Dog Feed
Frank H. Foster, corporation attorney of Cor
dova, mourns the fact that several hundred
Indians on Copper River take an estimated
thirty thousand red salmon each year for food
for themselves and dogs, and he would like
this privilege stopped so that the estimated
thirty thousand fish could spawn.
Thirty thousand salmon in the Cordova dis
trict is just about one day’s catch for two
traps, of which there are many in that district.
We would like to see Mr. Foster and the Cordova
Chamber of Commerce, which he represents,
shed a few crocodile tears about the hundreds
of thousands of salmon which are prevented
from spawning by the large traps owned not
by residents of Copper River but in Seattle
and Chicago.
Fertilizer
At the herring plant at Little Port Walter,
Alaska, the Company has two girls who sort
herring for salting. Every now and then these
girls take turns and select one herring from the
thousands that pass them on the conveyor. All
the rest of the several thousand barrels of
herring that are handled at this plant each
day are ground into fertilizer.
The real business of this Company is the
manufacturing of fertilizer from food fish. The
two girls who sort for salting are merely fakes
Where is Ilenry O’Malley, so-called fish con
seiver? How long will Alaskans tolerate mis
management of the P>ureau of Fisheries?
A Comparison
We were talking with Fish Commissioner
llenry O’Malley the other day, and he made the
statement that “seiners can fish any place a
trap can fish, and at any time.” The ignorance
of the practical difficulties of the fish business
is well portrayed in the above statement. We
doubt very much if this so-called expert could
tell the kind of fish that was swimming about
his boat from observing the way it jumps.
We were in Clarence Straits the other day
when a fierce north wind was blowing. Not
a single seiner was to be seen \ within thirty
miles, for the reason that the waters were too
rough, and also because the seining grounds
are in bays and narrow channels. But we
stopped at two traps and learned that these two
traps alone, to say nothing of three hundred
other traps in this division, caught that day
over 20,000 salmon.
Mr. O’Malley says that it is his business to
see that fish get to the spawning grounds, and
he thinks it is all right and fair to close up
the bays and inlets, the only place where the
seiners can work, under the pretense that the
seiners can fish out in the ocean or in the large
straits. He refuses to lecognize the fact that
under his rules fishing can be done only with
traps.