The Closed Season—Who Is
Responsible?
Many cannerymen and some fishermen are
blaming William L. Paul for the rule that stops
fishing on August 20th. They say “That is the
result of his work.”
To clear up the record, 1 have to say that this
law was proposed and put thru by Ex-Senator
J. R. Heckman. I opposed the bill all the way.
It is based on entirely wrong principles.
Heckman’s bill proposed to shut down the
season around Wrangell and Petersburg on Aug
ust 10th. Due to my arguments the season was
extended to August 20 altho I asked for August
25, that is if the season was going to be closed
at all.
Heckman’s plan, endorsed by the Territorial
Fish Commission, has been adopted by Herbert
Hoover and the Bureau of Fisheries, which only
proves that the Bureau never learns and never
thinks.
“If you breed late fish, you will get late fish.”
If you catch all the fish that come to the
streams prior to August 20th, the time will
come when there will not be any fish here ex
cept those that come on or after August 20th.
The thing that should be done is not to short
en the fishing season, but to lengthen it. This
could be done by transplanting fish from the
early streams to the late streams. Here is the
only place where the hatchery fits in with our
scheme. Instead of hatching late fish, hatch
early fish and plant them in all the streams un
til we breed a run of fish that will begin to come
in here early in June instead of waiting till July
20th. In this way we could add one whole month
to our season and double our wealth producing
capacity.
Alaska will not become a decent place to live
in until all traps are abolished.
Bureaucrats
Thinking citizens all over the United States
are awakening to the danger of this new devel
opment in our government, towit: the tendency
of Congress to turn our government over to
Bureaus.
A writer in the American Bar Association
Journal, F. Dumont Smith, of the Kansas Bar
in his article entitled The Revolution, says:
“The result of this centralization has been to
build up a great Bureaucracy in Washington
with more than seven hundred thousand mem
bers, constantly increasing. The greatest danger
to this country is not from below but from
above; not from the Reds and Anarchists but
from the Bureaucrats. It is profoundly signifi
cant, although apparently unnoted by the public,
that the" scandals that have been, rife in Wash
ington have not touched the elective servants of
the people, Congress and the President. All the
slime and filth of corruption, bribery, and mal
versation is confined and absolutely limited to
the bureaucracy. Such has it been in all his
tory. It was the corruption and inefficiency
of the Bureaucracy and not Tzarism that des
troyed the great Russian Empire. It was the
corruption and inefficiency of the Italian Bureau
cracy as much as Bolshevism that drove Italy
into the arms of Fascisti. It was the corruption
and inefficiency of the Spanish Bureaucracy that
compelled a Dictatorship. And the Washington
Bureaucracy with its strangle hold on the gov
ernment, its corruption and inefficiency, is run
ning true to historical form. A bureaucracy is
the most odious of all tyrannies because it is
anonymous. While we have been pursu
ing this course our English cousins have
been decentralizing, not only granting full
self - government to their Colonies and
to Ireland, but decentralizing at home by estab
lishing such local governmental bodies as the
London County Council with legislative and ad
ministrative powers almost equal to our state.”
Bolshevist!
“If the day should ever arrive (which God for
bid!) when the people of the different parts of
our country shall allow their local affairs to be
administered by prefects sent from Washing
ton, and when the self-government of the states
shall have been so far lost as that of the depart
ments of France, or even so far as that of the
counties of England—on that day the progres
sive political career of the American people will
have come to an end, and the hopes that have
been built upon it for the future happiness and
prosperity of mankind will be wrecked forever.”
The policy of this paper has been and will
continue to be a vigorous protest against the
Bureau of Fisheries and other bureaus of Wash
ington. The principle in unAmerican. Their
record has been one of inefficiency and tyranny.
Each Chief of the Bureau gets the feeling that
he is ordained by God to rule, and where his
judgement differs from that of the people, he
has always shown a contempt for the people.
We will continue to protest against the usurpa
tion of power by men like Herbert Hoover, Hen
ry O’Malley and his subordinates.
Even if they were endowed with the wisdom
of the sages, we would protest against the sys
tem of Bureaucracies that tramples American
citizens under foot. But during the twenty
years that we have had them most active in
Alaska, the evidence is that they are as ineffici
ent as they are tyrannical.
Even now as you read this article, many of
you will feel that the editor of this paper is a
“bolshevist” or a “radical.” And yet we have
cited the above quotation just to prove to such
that our greatest American historian of our
times had correctly pictured the evils of Bureau
crats. The foregoing quotation is by John Fiske.
in his “Critical Period of American History.”
November 4th is the date.
The following men are your candidates, pledged
to protect your interests. There is great danger
in scratching:
Dan Sutherland, for Delegate to Congress;
John Rustgard, for Attorney General;
F. J. Hunt, for Territory Senator;
William D. Grant, for Representative;
C. B. Ferguson, for Representative;
Perry M. Hern, for Representative;
William L. Paul, for Representative.