The Nome Nugget

Monday, July 21, 1947

In Agreement For Once

(The Alaska Weekly)

WE HAVE NOTICED two editorials recently in Alaska papers, both of which we found more than ordinarily interesting. One was in the Juneau Empire, giving Regional Forester Frank Heintzleman all the credit for the work he has done for the past 25 or 30 years in trying to promote a pulp and paper industry in Alaska, and the other in the Ketchikan Chronicle according the credit for the apparently successful consummation to the Alaska Development Board. Strangely enough we agree with both of them:

Said the "Empire" in part:

"Regional Forester B. Frank Heintzleman is coming close to accomplishing what he set out to do some 25 or 30 years ago bring the pulp and paper industry into Southeast Alaska. Time after time he has almost made the grade, only to have some new obstacle thrown in the path.

According to yesterday's news from Washington, the only barrier now is the claims of Alaska Indians to the land involved. An attempt to settle this problem is being made. Congress now has before it a proposed resolution which would clear the way for the signing of contracts with pulp investors this year. The resolution proposes that receipts from the sale of the disputed land would be held in a special fund until the question of land and timber rights are settled by further legislation."

Because of space limitation we also quote but a portion of the Chronicle's able editorial:

"It is time, The Chronicle believes, to pat the Alaska Development Board on the back for taking the initiative in going after a new paper industry, at least one unit of which seems well assured for the Thomas Bay area.

A little over a year ago the board sensed that the time was ripe to interest outside capital in producing newsprint in Alaska. The nation's newspapers were crying for more print but neither American nor Canadian mills were willing and ready to answer the demand.

The development board and Manager Henry Clark decided that the existing paper industry wasn't going to go out of its way to come to Alaska with new mills because the existing shortage was bidding up the price and these mills enjoyed a fine profit without putting out new capital against a somewhat risky future. So the development board took the bull by the horns and went after the newspaper publishers who lacked print but had plenty of money with which to build their own news print mills.

The success of the Southland plant in Alabama has been known for some time in newspaper row. That mill, started merely to assure southern publishers of a steady supply even though it lost money, has paid almost from the start. Recently when its officers decided to double capacity, banks in Alabama and Texas quickly supplied financial backing at reasonable rates, demonstrating that the paper industry had proved its stability. So, concluded the Alaska Development Board and the newspaper publishers of 11 western states who were consulted, the same thing might work in Alaska."

It begins to look as though we may have a pulp industry in Alaska. For this fact which means more to the Territory than any development in many years, we have both the untiring and persistent efforts of Frank Heintzleman and the constructive work of the Alaska Development Board to thank. Frank Heintzleman has done a job in this respect which should earn him the gratitude of every Alaskan, and the Alaska Development Board, if it had only this job to its credit, would have paid its way a thousand fold.

We chance to have personal knowledge that some of the more important Pacific coast newspaper publishers who are interested in Alaska pulp are disposed to forget the cheaper labor, the lower taxes of Canada and the cheaper pine of the southern states in favor of what Alaska may mean to the Pacific Northwest in the long range. They are, however, still concerned over the aboriginal claims with which the great crusader Ickes furnished William L. Paul, Jr., of Juneau a livelihood so long as he can get away with it.

The resolution which provides that the receipts from disputed lands will be held in a special fund until the rights of the Natives have been determined is eminently fair. No one who merely sought justice could offer any possible objection to it. It has the backing of the Department of Agriculture and of the Department of the Interior and is being opposed only by those who would exploit the Natives. Alaskan forests are of no value to anyone Natives, the United States, or Alaska-- without exploitation based on conservation through utilization.

Congress, all the members of which should, for their own sake and the sake of their constituents, be interested in the development of Alaska, should not delay the passage of this resolution.

We cannot refrain, in closing this editorial, from again quoting from the Ketchikan Chronicle and joining with that publication in paying our respects to the late unlamented Territorial legislature:

"We think, too, that it is time to pay just respects to those noble legislators who though the development board should die. For a few thousand dollars in promotion, Alaska stands to attract an industry that can produce 1,000,000 tons of newsprint per year worth, at present prices, about $92,000,000. That is more than all the fish, fur, gold and timber were worth that Alaska has produced in any single year in the past. On the cornerstone of the first big paper mill should be graven the names of those men of little wisdom who let their hatred for the governor and his dreams of a better Alaska becloud their judgment and betray their constituents at home."