The Wrangell Sentinel

Generalities
Versus
Facts

The chief difficulty confronting those who are attempting to offer constructive suggestion or legislation touching the salmon packing industry of Alaska is the impossibility of standardization owing to widely different local conditions along the thousands of miles of coast and waterway where canneries are located. What is feasible at one point may be impractical or quite impossible at another.

The same difficulty presents itself in discussing any given phase of the industry. As a consequence statements are often made which may be true of a given locality while in nowise applicable to the industry as a whole which are none the less accepted by the public as applying generally.

The statement that the packers bring outside labor into the territory for the season and pay them at outside points at the conclusion of the season is a common one. When found to be true investigation will prove it to be so only in cases where the canneries are located at isolated points, where no local labor is to be had, and where there are often no merchandising institutions except cannery commissaries in which the men may spend their money. On the other hand in Southeastern Alaska where the country is more thickly settled by far the greater percentage of employees are residents of Alaska.

Again the statement is often made that cannery crews are largely made up of Orientals. An examination of The U. S. Bureau of Fisheries report for 1922 shows that of the 21,974 employees, 12,429 were white, 4,192 were natives of Alaska and 5,353 were Orientals, Mexicans and Negroes, most of whom were employed at labor unattractive to white men.

It is impossible to accurately arrive at figures on the proportion of cannery wages paid to Alaskans in Alaska. We would say that a reasonable estimate was 35% or approximately $3,500,000.00 annually.

There is no locality in Alaska where merchandising institutions are within the radius of fishing operations where those institutions do not profit materially through the industry. A careful and unbiased consideration of the subject will convince anyone that the benefits derived by Alaskans and Alaskan communities from the canning industry are in direct ratio to the capacity for serving the industry in the different localities.

Herbert Hoover once said, "Scientific discussion, pious statements or political oratory will not spawn salmon." Neither will loose discussion, unfounded derogatory statements or political chicanery bring about conditions conducive to getting the best from the fisheries industry for Alaska or the packers.

On the contrary an understanding of the mutual problems confronting those engaged in the industry and the citizens of Alaska and a sane consideration of those problems in a spirit of sincerity will aid materially in their solution.

Alaska's chief industry is worthy of honest, unprejudiced consideration at the hands of every Alaskan.