The Nome Daily Nugget

Only 6 Of Families Want To Return

MATANUSKA PROJECT SUBJECT OF CONGRESS INVESTIGATION BEGUN

(By The Associated Press)

WASHINGTON, June 28.—Matanuska, the name which rolls freely over the tongue, also rolled freely over the press, wires, and newspapers front pages, as the proponents and opponents of Alaska's famous experimental colonization project is discussed.

In the Halls of Congress, Senator Bone of Washington, democrat, lauded the project, in answer to the recent speech of Senator Vanderberg, republican of Michigan, who termed it a "crazy experiment."

Bone praised the project as an effort to open up Alaska as a new frontier, by sending settlers to the valley which is "rich and fertile." He described the controversy as "something in the nature of a tempest in a teapot." He displayed pictures, in connection with his speech, of communities in Minnesota, Michigan and Wisconsin from which the settlers had been taken, describing them as "desolate, and abandoned villages", in most instances.

A few minutes after Bone finished his address. in the senate, Harry L. Hopkins selected S. R. Fuller, New York industrialist to make an inspection of the project. Fuller is to be accompanied North by a small technical staff.

From Palmer came reports that only six families out of the two hundred had asked to be returned to the states, while the leaders of the group of twenty, forty and fifty colonists, Ray Hemmer and Mrs. I. M. Sandvik. who had sent in the protests, to Washington, had about-faced and declared that they were going to stick with the colony.

Meanwhile there was an adjustment of prices in the commissary store which fixed the price of supplies at Seattle prices plus transportation costs.

The colonists looked forward to the arrival of Eugene Carr, ace-trouble-shooter of the Relief Administration.

Some consternation was caused when a report got abroad that the government was going to send the families all back to the states. One leading farmer declared that he and his family "would go hide in the hills first."

Kansas Associate Justice Speaks Of West

White-haired William Hutchinson, Associate Justice of the Kansas Supreme Court merely smiled, at Topeka, as he discussed the complaints of the Matanuska colony.

The seventy-five year old jurist came to Kansas from Pennsylvania in 1886 and settled in sand-swept Grant County. Between battling grass-hoppers, sand storms, and high winds, it was an actual struggle for existence. Corn meal was the staple diet and buffalo chips practically the only fuel, with sod houses the only dwelling places. There were no provisions and no medical attention except what the settlers could provide for themselves.

"Those settlers in Alaska today don't really know what hardships are", the Associate Justice said, with a twinkle in his eye.

Agitators At Matanuska To Be Removed

WASHINGTON, June 28—Lawrence Westbrook, assistant relief administrator asserted here that the difficulties at Matanuska were caused by "agitators."

Westbrook, who supervised the establishment of the colony, said that the report received said that ninety per- cent of the two hundred families "were satisfied with their lot and determined to see the project through."

He added that Leo Jacobs superintending architect re- ported that the "ten percent of the number responsible for the stories of unrest are being sent from the valley, and they constituted a group of agitators, who are idlers."

With the arrival of Eugene Carr at Palmer yesterday, Westbrook continued "I expect an early settlement of any real or fancied grievances which the colonists may have.