WHY CRIME RULES IN ALASKAN AFFAIRS

...It has been a wonderful experience to visit Notre Dame, Chatres, Saint Chapelle and others here...

...The last two days I have been doing one of the cathed-drals in oil, I never work in anything else...

...And, so far they have been remarkably successful in securing the nomination of men who would do their bidding regardless of the attitude of the majority of the people of Alaska...

...The supporters of Mr...

...reality suffering all the evils of "carpet bag" government in its worst form...

...Reputable citizens of Alaska declare that all respect for law and the administration of Justice is being broken down by the retention of these discredited men in their official positions...

...SIXTH: Judge Reed and District Attorney Shoup participated in unlawful conspiracy to defraud the United States Government by payment of fraudulent witness fees...

...get reports in our office from twenty-four other nations of the world, where we have representatives, so that I have a pretty close touch with what we call moral conditions...

...FOURTH: Judge Ritchie denounced the Grand Jury for the indictment of the Fish Trust corporations for flagrant violations of the fishing laws...

...In the priory that used to be attached to the church on this site, William the Conqueror died...

...These officials were originally appointed by President Harding during the days when Harry Daugherty ruled in the Department of Justice and approved all judicial appointments...

...In spite of these repeated protests and the recommendations of Mr...

...EIGHTH: Under Judge Reed and Attorney Shoup administration of the Prohi-tion and Narcotic Laws have degenerated into a farce, minimum fines being asked in the comparatively few cases where convictions are obtained...

...Moral Conditions Vile FOR MANY YEARS the Salmon Trust has been operating its canneries under conditions so unbelievably vile that the English language can scarcely describe them...

...Publicly declared that violating prohibition laws constitutes no moral offense because people do not believe in them...

...I enjoy it immensely "You can't imagine how much I have enjoyed the cathedrals...

...It is inexcusable even in time of war for the War Department to accept canned salmon that if eaten by our soldiers would have probably resulted in their death, especially in view of the fact that the War Department had noticed that rotten fish were being packed...

...The canners who packed it knowing that it was intended to be eaten by our soldiers should have been brought before a firing squad...

...We want to get rid of the militarist not simply because he hurts and kills, but because he is an intolerable thick-voiced blockhead who stands hectoring and blustering in our way to achievement...

...SEVENTH: District Attorney Shoup permits red light districts to operate openly in Ketchikan and Juneau in violation of Abatement Law and in spite of repeated protests from ministers, women's organizations and the respectable citizens generally...

...I was so delighted with the place that I went and bought two big books full of loose-leaf photographs of the building...

...This is the worst spot in Alaska, and it is ON INDIAN LANDS, ON LANDS RESERVED BY THE INTERIOR SECRETARY FOR INDIAN USE...

...Why do not the people of Alaska do their own house-cleaning...

...Under the Organic Act and other Federal statutes, law enforcement in Alaska is placed entirely in the hands of the Governor, the Federal Judges and District Attorneys and the minor officials who are their assistants...

...Through the influence of the Salmon Trust the Democratic machine caused the withdrawal of the Democratic candidate and united its forces with the reactionary Republicans in support of an independent candidate named Thomas A. Marquam...

...Clarence True Wilson, Secretary of the Board of Temperance and Public Morals of the Methodist Episcopal Church, based upon the reports Which he received from the missionaries and pastors in Alaska: "Being Secretary of this Board of the Methodist Episcopal Church, I get a report on vice from all pastors in Alaska and from our District Superintendent and from our Bishop who travels up there, and who has charge of the religious and moral welfare work in Alaska...

...social injustice and the sight of the limited and cramped human beings it produces, torment the soul...

...And yet the people of Alaska are powerless to control vice, crime and corruption...

...Quen—the finest and largest church there —and looked about me, there was a regular forest of spires roundabout, and all of them very ancient...

...And, by the expert testimony of the Bureau of Chemistry, they knew these salmon were putrid and poisonous when they were canned...

...In the fishing districts in the western part of the Third Division, and especially in Bristol Bay, we find conditions appalling and on account of the '•karacter of labor employed and the conditions existing at many of the canneries, the government is put to the expense of many thousands of dollars, which in our judgment, should be avoided...

...FIRST: Judge Ritchie, convicted of criminal libel in Utah, fled the State to escape payment of a fine and prosecution for perjury...

...The sexton showed me where the hole in the roof had been to let in air...

...one of the sculptures, and one of the architecture...

...It is not at all blackened with smoke like the churches of Paris...

...He has fought valiantly, not only against those who are seeking to loot the wonderful natural resources of Alaska, but also against those who are responsible for those evils...

...I should hesitate to refer to these conditions if they were not repeatedly set forth in the official findings of Grand Juries, and if a knowledge of them was not essential to an understanding of the desperate attempts of the Salmon Trust to maintain unfit men in office...

...Why is it that with such courageous and able spokesmen as Delegates Wickersham and Sutherland the people of Alaska have been unable to secure justice...

...Christianity must have been still a very pure and a very real thing for people to be willing to risk their lives for public worship, and in such a forbidding place...

...Gentlemen, there is no place that you will ever put your finger on, or that your eye will ever gaze on, that needs a moral cleansing like they do up in Alaska...

...Some of the greenish effect is caused by grass growing out between the stones here and there all over the building—that and a very short moss...

...They are as drastic and as well drawn as the statutes of any state...

...Now, in addition, we...

...Prostitutes, pimps and bootleggers, the gambling houses and gunmen, the low class foreigners and the criminal element, which naturally congregate around the red-light district, live in 'Indian Town' having crowded out the gentle, inoffensive and better class of Indians...

...that would have been a mild method of dealing with them, but the War Department knowing the fact did not even ask that they be prosecuted under the available criminal laws...

...DAN A. Sutherland, who succeeded Judge Wickersham as delegate, is also a Progressive Republican and a man of unusual courage...

...The sculptures are most interesting, quaint and naive...

...The people are fighting against an unholy combination of big business and the vice ring, similar to that which has debauched Chicago and a hundred other American cities...

...The course of action upon the part of the War Department in connection with the purchase of the 1918 pack of salmon and the contract entered into with the packers with reference to its return would indicate gross fraud upon the part of the packers and pathetic tenderness upon the part of the officials of the War Department toward those who sought to defraud...

...INSTEAD of submitting their unanimous report recommending the rejection of the nominations of Judges Reed, Ritchie and District Attorney Shoup to the Senate, the Judiciary Committee decided to urge President Coolidge to withdraw the nominations because as one of the members of the Committee stated, "The conditions were too scandalous to be publicly discussed...

...As a matter of fact Alaska has been a leader in reform legislation and designed to correct the very evils of which her citizens are now so bitterly complaining...

...Verily, it has all the delicacy of some fine piece of jewelry, without sacrificing strength to obtain it...

...At one cannery it appears that there were at least forty men addicted to the use of various narcotics such as opium, cocaine, mari-huana, and other habit-forming drugs...

...You can now understand why the Salmon Trust and the vice ring are interested in the men who administer law in Alaska...

...He is technically a fugitive from justice...

...That is a fair question...

...The food is excellent there and I eat plenty...

...And I do not hesitate to say that there is not today a place on the round earth, not even China or South Africa or in any country of Europe, and there never was in the United States or territories, as wide-open conditions as flourish in our conduct of government in Alaska at this moment...

...and imposed nominal fines when convicted...

...Here for example is an extract from the official report of the Grand Jury at Valdez, Alaska: "We, the Grand Jury for the September 4, 1923, term of the above entitled court, held at Valdez, Territory and Division aforesaid, composed of eleven women and eleven men, beg to submit this special report...

...Alaska is the Nation's treasure house—the land of miraculous natural resources in its mines, its forests and its fisheries...

...The President has been challenged to state whether these declarations are being made with his knowledge and consent, but up to the present time he is silent...

...Lax Law Enforcement THE REASON for this is that although the people of Alaska are permitted to make their laws, they have nothing whatever to do with their administration and enforcement...

...If there are what we call wide-open conditions it registers in our office...

...I pay about seven dollars a month tor a very nice room with two large windows, and looking out on a huge court with trees in it...

...Did you go to Rouen, where as you know Joan of Arc was burned at the stake, where a monument to her memory stands...

...The President of the United States, as well as the Attorney General, has refused to heed the repeated protests and petitions of the decent citizens of Alaska to be relieved of the intolerable conditions under ¦which they are living...

...Although five months have since elapsed these discredited officials are still permitted to remain in office by the President...

...I went a couple of weeks ago and spent a day there...

...They do not care who makes the laws or what laws are made if they have their own friends in office to see that these laws are not enforced...

...As a result Assistant Attorney General Mabel Walker Wil-lebrandt filed an official memorandum urging that these officials should not be reappointed and that special steps should be taken by the Department of Justice to clean up the entire Alaskan situation...

...It is the loveliest old medieval place imaginable, a city full of old churches and houses as well, dating from the middle ages...

...This is the declaration of Judge Wickersham, who has for years been striving to clean up this evil situation...

...During these hearings overwhelming testimony was secured sustaining the following charges...

...Alaskan fishing and especially salmon is one of the Nation's greatest food supplies and yet it appears that there has never been aay government supervision to guarantee the cleanliness, purity, and wholesomeness of the product packed...

...Retain Incompetent Officials AT THE present time these powerful interests are seeking to retain in office Federal Judges Reed and Ritchie and District Attorney Shoup who have shown a callous indifference to the grievances of the decent people of Alaska and have done everything within their power to protect the interests of the Salmon Trust and the vice ring...

...Our missionaries complain of conditions, that they can not get headway against them...

...The Alaska salmon canners were willing to poison our troops with ptomaines for the sake of petty profits...

...Their terms expired more than 14 months ago and strong protests from all classes of decent citizens in Alaska were lodged against their reappointment...

...Living is so cheap here as to give the place a rather Utopian aspect for me...

...but the strongest incentive to constructive political and social work lies not so much in the mere hope of escaping evils as in the opportunity for great adventures that their suppression will open to our race...

...Nominally the people of Alaska are self-governing...

...The Salmon Trust is rich, powerful, and greedy for profits at any price...

...SECOND: Judge Ritchie's conduct on and off the bench lends encouragement to the lawless and criminal element...

...WAR AND THE MILITARIST "War is a horrible thing, and constantly more horrible and dreadful, so that unless it is ended it will certainly end human society...

...Statutes for the closing of red light districts by abatement proceedings, laws to prohibit dope peddling and bootlegging have long been enacted...

...This may seem a sensationally extreme stateBasil Manly ment but here is the petition of the Woman's Council of Ketchikan, composed of the wives and mothers who see their children demoralized by their surroundings...

...Dan A. Sutherland, who as delegate has demanded the removal of these discredited officials, is the Republican nominee regularly chosen by the people in the primary election...

...1408, House of Representatives, 66th Cong., 3rd Session...

...The people of Alaska are progressive and are equal in intelligence and civic spirit to those to be found in any part of the United States...

...We wish to call special attention to narcotic conditions...

...Accordingly a sub-committee headed by the late Senator Cummins was sent to see the President and to urge him to withdraw the nominations so that their public exposure might be prevented...

...Big Business to Blame HON...

...The most rapacious of these corporations is the Salmon Trust, whose unscrupulous exploitation has almost exhausted the wonderful salmon fisheries of Washington and Oregon and is now rapidly exhausting the even richer reserves of Alaska...

...I never pay more than twenty-five or thirty cents for a meal at the little students' restaurant around the corner...

...The advice of this committee prevailed and on June 4, 1926, President Coolidge withdrew these nominations...

...I have been sculping, drawing, painting, and now I am taking violin lessons...

...I am practicing violin mostly, going out about 3 or 4 in the afternoon to make a sketch along the Seine somewhere...

...G. Wells in "The Outline of History...

...Willebrandt, President Coolidge sent their names to the Senate for confirmation...

...In many instances, foremen of China crews handle narcotics and dispense them to men under their charge and in the cannery, and there appear to be narcotics sold, and addicts at all canneries...

...Return of Salmon to Packers—March 2, 1921...

...The people of Alaska have nothing whatever to say about the appointment of these law enforcement officials...

...The sexton took me down and showed me the old crypt where the old Christians used to worship in the days of the persecutions, and I must say that I regarded the place with a deal of reverence...

...For nearly four years the progressive, law-abiding citizens of Alaska have been calling the attention of the National Government at Washington to conditions of vice, crime and corruption which are almost without parallel in any civilized country...

...Many addicts and a large amount of narcotics find their way to the canneries and fishing grounds through the cannery help, and it has become a grave menace to the safety and health of the people of Alaska, and especially to the food supply through the use of diseased help in the packing and handling of salmon...

...So brazen is the Alaskan vice ring that in the city of Ketchikan, one of the great fishing centers of Alaska, the red light district is located upon Indian land owned and operated by the Federal Government...

...The answer is that they have tried to do so and have exhausted every resource at their command...

...It is under a modern church, but there have been either two or three churches built before in the same place...

...The World's Worst HERE ALSO is the testimony of Dr...

...Evidence on file in Department of Justice shows thousands of dollars tribute levied on prostitutes monthly by underlings for protection...

...It is true that the people of Alaska have a spokesman at Washington...

...The Alaskan Vice Ring THE Salmon Trust wants three things above all others—cheap labor, freedom from effective government inspection of its products, and freedom from all proper restrictions on its methods of catching the salmon...

...Of all that I have seen so far, Chatres appeals to me most...

...The atmosphere of the place is such as to lure one back again...

...Thanks to the direct primary they have selected honest, able and courageous men to represent them...

...Extract from Report No...

...Nowndays with fine building's and more or less comfortable pews, the churches are empty...

...Great corporate interests are seeking to exploit those resources without regard to their proper conservation and with no thought of the welfare of the people of Alaska...

...Judge James Wickersham, delegate from Alaska from 1909 to 1921, is a distinguished lawyer of uncommon ability...

...FIFTH: Judge Read admitted judicial tyranny in sentencing F. W. Harris and associates to jail for contempt when there was no foundation in law or fact for such a sentence...

...This recommendation was also concurred in by former Attorney General Harlan F. Stone, who is now a member of the United States Supreme Court...

...The people of Alaska have been fortunate in their choice of delegates...

...We protest against the atmosphere of intolerance and indifference that permits these conditions...

...It is wonderful to have an opportunity to see such places...

...I saw an old crypt dating from the fourth century...

...Marquam are now publicly declaring that if Sutherland is defeated Reed, Ritchie and Shoup will again be nominated by President Coolidge...

...Nevertheless it may be safely predicted that if these officials are still in office when the Senate meets there will be a vigorous fight by those Senators who heard the damning testimony against them to secure their immediate removal...

...Stone and Mrs...

...Everything about it is fine, the design, the sculptures, and the color and texture which age has given to the stone...

...President Delays Action IT WAS upon the appeal of these respectable citizens of Alaska that the People's Legislative Service recently sent a strong appeal to President Coolidge calling his attention to these intolerable conditions and urging him to remedy them...

...Wide-open Conditions Flourish as Nowhere in World By BASIL MANLY (Director People's Legislative Service) ALASKA, the ward of the United States, is calling on the American people for help...

...She is appealing to the American people because the ears of those who are officially responsible for the administration of law in Alaska are deaf to all her pleas...

...Nevertheless the President has as yet done nothing and is apparently waiting to see the outcome of the elections which are now taking place in Alaska...

...The members of the Ketchikan Woman's Council protest against the conditions which are giving Ketchikan the reputation of being the most wicked city of its size in the West...

...And it can not he done with the present judges, marshals and United States attorneys...

...This is an extract from the official report of the Select Committee on Expenditures in the War Department of the House of Representatives of which Congressman Graham of Illinois was Chairman...

...They are in almost exactly the same position that the American colonists were when they vainly besought King George the Third to redress their grievances...

...The Judiciary Committee of the Senate to which these nominations were referred held extensive investigations and as a result unanimously rejected the nominations...

...Cousin Chester in Paris (From a Personal Letter Oct 8, 1926) IHAVE been enjoying my life in Paris very much indeed...

...It is the old story...

...Bootlegging, dope peddling, and women engaged in illicit and illegal business, with their agents and solicitors are the common knowledge of every citizen of Ketchikan...

...This appeal was widely printed throughout the United States and Alaska, and numerous religious and moral organizations have communicated to President Coolidge their urgent desire that he should act to correct these conditions...

...They seek to have judges and district attorneys who can be depended upon to protect their interests and to use the law to harras the independent fishermen and others who are seeking to curb their enormous power...

...The people of Alaska are in...

...THIRD: Judge Ritchie failed to act to check the unspeakable conditions in salmon canneries resulting from importation of Asiatic labor, denounced by the Va Grand Jury for the indictment of the Fish Use of diseased and syphilitic labor in salmon packing, open narcotic peddling, unnatural vice, and lack of proper medical and sanitary inspection...

...The most that the people of Alaska can do is to petition the President and state their grievances...

...He is a Progressive Republican and during the twelve years of his official service he fought manfully to secure justice for the people of Alaska...

...When I was up on the church of St...

...We further find that no adequate examination or inspection is made of men who have the actual handling of the fish products as reported above, as to their being infected with contagious and loathsome disease...

...They elect a delegate who has a seat in the House of Representatives...

...In order to secure cheap labor it is to the Salmon Trust's interests to work hand in glove with the vice ring which is engaged in debauching the fishermen and cannery crews through wide open red light districts, dope peddling and illicit sale of moonshine liquor...

...They are appointed by the President of the United States who is 5,000 miles away in Washington...

...During the Great War five million cans of rotten salmon were sold to the American Army...

...The stone is a beautiful greenish-gray with an element of brown in it...

...They cannot elect them, and they cannot remove them from office if they prove to be corrupt or inefficient...

...Under the Organic Act providing for the territory of Alaska they are permitted to have their own legislature, and within certain limits to enact their own laws...

...Respect for the courts is being undermined and at the same time the evil conditions which have already been described are growing steadily worse...

...I told someone that the only view I lack is the one from underneath...

...Repeated protests against them officially had already been made and the Department of Justice had made repeated investigations through its agents in Alaska...

...Many of them were admitted by the accused officials...