The Daily Alaska Empire

TWO VIEWS ON ALASKA
Even a little knowledge about Alaska is a good thing. Witness two short articles concerning the Territory in The New Republic. One was written by Robert Marshall, the late Director of the Division of Lands in the United States Forest Service, shortly before his death. The other, designed as an answer to Marshall's, is by Robert Morss Lovett, one of the editors of The New Republic.
Marshall has been to Alaska more than once. His thesis in "Should We Settle Alaska?" is that the colonization and development plan proposed in the Slattery Report is all wet. If Lovett has been any nearer than Jersey City to the Territory it doesn't show in his statements such as:
"The plain fact, ignored by Mr. Marshall, is that the (immigration) quota system applied to Alaska is a national crime. It should be abolished, with due safeguards against the immigration of new citizens of Alaska into the continental United States."
These "due safeguards" of course would be inquisitions at every port of exit to separate the sheep from the goats. Alaskans would have to carry passports as if they were residents of a foreign country.
Mr. Lovett thinks a population of a million could support itself here almost entirely "by the exchange of goods and services in an economy based primarily on the varied natural resources of Alaska." He thinks a billion dollars of private capital would turn the trick and suggests rather vaguely that "such capital need not be limited by the profit incentive," which we think even Mr. Lovett would doubt if he really sat down to think it over.
Marshall, listing his objections in 1-2-3-4 order, says that as far as agricultural possibilities are concerning perhaps $2,000,000 worth of additional products could be home grown in Alaska, which would furnish part-time support for a few thousand settlers, except that there are already in Alaska many hundreds of Alaskans in need of work who deserve first opportunity in any resettlement profits. Our timber, he states, cannot compete with United States or Canadian timber in the woodpulp market, as has been demonstrated in the vain efforts made for the past 20 years to interest private capital in its development. He points out that a pulp unit costing $15,000,000 would furnish about 1,000 jobs, a very expensive way to support immigrants. Point by point, he explodes the big talk about herring, the 29 minerals which are said to exist here in "commercial quantities," peat and reindeer horns, furniture and toys. Referring to the Slattery Report's discussion of recreational development, this man whose specialty was just that says:
"Most tourists who come to Alaska do so partly for the frontier atmosphere, which would be lost if 'those who made the mountains, forests and mineral springs of Europe world centers for health-seekers, sport-lovers and travelers . . . helped to develop the recreational areas of Alaska.' It would be like getting Grover Whalen to manage the Louvre."
If the settlement enterprise is to be underwritten by private capital, Marshall says, the settler will be strangled from the start by the self-same factor which has strangled farmers in the United States when they have operated on privately loaned capital. If interest is low enough so the settlers can meet it, then capital will not come in sufficiently large amounts to be of material help."
The chief factor which made for the success of the British East India Company and other charter enterprises mentioned in the Slattery Report as models was, he writes, their freedom from the rigid public controls which the authors of the report propose for the Alaskan development corporations.
Marshall has more to say:
"There are a few additional considerations bearing on the basic philosophy of the report. The authors say: 'It is an inescapable moral obligation of the United States toward the people of Alaska to develop Alaska's resources.' World history for the last hundred years has been the story of the rapid development of untapped resources which represent the accumulated natural processes of eons, yet this opening of new frontiers has seldom brought more than transient prosperity for the vast majority of those engaged in it. The only reason we have as high a standard of living as we do today is that the more primitive people of past ages saw nothing immoral about leaving resources undeveloped.
"Before further development of Alaskan resources can significantly increase human happiness, it is necessary to find a solution to the blockade on distribution which keeps us from realizing more than a fraction of the potential wealth of the United States. It is pleasant to dream that we can dodge the uncomfortable necessity of meeting this problem through some panacea ranging in scope from Townsendism to the opening of new frontiers, but it cannot be escaped. If we ever find a method of correlating purchasing power with productive capacity, then we can take care of many times the 20,000,000 European refugees in addition to our own 10,000,000 unemployed, right in the 48 States. . . .
"Furthermore, increase in population would . . . take away from people the unique possibilities of individuality found in scantily populated countries where men are few and each one is distinctive. Until increased population can reasonably be expected to provide material economical and social advantages, these are important values to sacrifice."
What Alaska needs is more informed friends like Robert Marshall and fewer well-intentioned but unqualified commentators like Robert Morss Lovett. It is a significant fact that those who know Alaska turn thumbs down on the Slattery plan while its most enthusiastic supporters are those farthest away.