The Press SATURDAY, JULY 5, 1958. 49 United States

Press, Volume XCVII, Issue 28630, 5 July 1958, Page 12

The Press SATURDAY, JULY 5, 1958. 49 United States

When the United States bought Alaska from Russia 90 years ago for seven million dollars, it pledged that the inhabitants of the ceded territory “shall be admitted to the enjoyment of “all the rights, advantages, and “ immunities of citizens of the United States Washington has taken an unconscionable time to redeem that pledge, but now that Alaska has become the forty-ninth State of the Union, the long years of neglect and discrimination by the Federal Government will be forgotten and Alaskans will be ready to make the new State not only a bulwark of Western defence, but a firm outpost of democracy almost within a stone’s throw of Russia. Washington, too, is to be congratulated for bringing to an end a flagrant example of colonialism on its own doorstep.

In the 30 years after the purchase of Alaska, the United State did virtually nothing about its new territory, which is a fifth of the size of the other 48 States. Indeed, the Federal Government was so little interested that the frontiersmen were once forced to appeal to Canada when an Indian uprising threatened, and for a period one of Her Majesty’s men-o’-war performed a function it was the duty and obligation of the United States to perform. The incident was typical of Federal indifference. Congress was not even roused from its lethargy in the late nineties by the discovery of gold in the Klondike, though it was forced to end the “ era of no government ” when 60,000 American prospectors rushed to the inhospitable north. It was not until 1912 that the demand for an Alaskan legislature was finally met; and the Organic Act giving this rtrinimum of home rule was deficient in many respects. No basic land laws could be enacted, federal control was retained over fisheries, wild life, and the judiciary, and in other prohibitions the act was much more restrictive than that given 12 years earlier to the newly-annexed territory of Hawaii. New discriminations intensified Alaska’s colonial status. Federal income tax, imposed in 1913, applied to Alaska, but Alaska was excluded from federal aid highway legislation passed in 1916. Alaska thus has

only a few miles of roads, excluding those the Federal Government has laid down for military purposes. The Maritime Act of 1920 closed down many young Alaskan industries by denying them the use of convenient Canadian ports dnd forcing them to trade through Seattle, giving Alaska the highest freight rates in the world. Federal land laws over 100 million acres of the territory have made settlement ex-tremely difficult and one of Alaska’s greatest natural resources, the salmon industry, has not developed under Federal control. Neither have Alaskans been able to vote for President or VicePresident nor be represented in Congress. The fight to gain these “ rights, “ privileges and immunities ” has been a long one. The first statehood bill was introduced nearly 40 years ago and since then both parties have made it part of their programme. Alaska has shown by referendum and by vote of the Territorial Legislature that it wanted statehood. Though its population of 210,000 is sparse, it is bigger than that of at least 20 other States at the time of their accession to the Union. It has shown repeatedly that it was ready and that it deserved statehood. The real opposition has been based on unworthy political considerations. Alaska has been traditionally Democratic and its admission has been opposed by the Republicans, and by the Southern Democrats, who knew that Alaska’s Congressmen would be certain to align themselves with the northern Democrat bloc. Opposition has come from the South for other reasons, too. In the past, Alaska has joined its, case for statehood with that of Hawaii. Both have non - European elements in their populations and would stand against the segregationists. Hawaii, however, has a multi-racial society and this year it decided to forgo its assault on Congress because it was widely believed that the prospect of Oriental or Polynesian Congressmen from Hawaii being sent to Washington was holding back Alaska’s claim. Now that Congress has made Alaska the forty-ninth State, a precedent has been created, and Hawaii’s claim to similar status cannot now be ignored.