Woe in the Wilderness

SIX WEEKS PASSED, NOTHING DONE. NO HOUSES, WELLS, ROADS. INADEQUATE MACHINERY, TOOLS. GOVERNMENT FOOD UNDELIVERED. COMMISSARY PRICES EXORBITANT. . . . REQUEST IMMEDIATE INVESTIGATION.

Thus last week the status and spirit of the New Deal relief colony in Alaska's Matanuska Valley was reported by colonists' telegrams to President Roosevelt, Relief Administrator Hopkins, Senators Couzens, La Follette and Schall, Governor

John W. Troy of Alaska (TIME, June 3 et ante).

Feeble indeed was the seed from which the colony had sprung. One night last year a registered nurse named William Garland Hoffman, having failed at dairy farming in Washington State, sat down at his kitchen table and wrote Administrator Hopkins a letter. He proposed that the Government set him and eight fellow Seventh Day Adventists up as farmers in Alaska. Though Mr. Hopkins replied enthusiastically. Nurse Hoffman soon lost heart. But his small seed had fallen on fertile ground. From New Deal minds, notably that of Assistant FERAdministrator Lawrence Westbrook, there shortly sprang full-blown a scheme for transplanting Depression-broken Northwestern farm families wholesale to fertile Matanuska Valley. At a stroke the Government would wipe out all their pasts of failure and despair, give them everything they needed for a clean new start in life.

It was heady, fine-sounding stuff on paper. Picked from relief rolls in Michigan, Wisconsin and Minnesota, the prospective colonists knew their Promised Land was a wilderness, but the Government was going to turn the wilderness overnight into an Eden with running water, radios, a cinema. It was going to set each family up on fine 40-acre farms with every necessity, many a luxury, 30 years to pay.

Alaskan sourdoughs scoffed at the whole scheme, pointed to the intense cold, the shallow soil, the short growing season, the hordes of mosquitoes. But Anthony J. Dimond, Alaskan Delegate to the U. S. House, declared: "There is only one possible danger of failure and that lies in the temper of the people."

Chimed Father Bernard Rosecrans Hubbard, famed Alaskan explorer priest: "If they are good enough for the country, the country is good enough for them."

At the railroad station in St. Paul a spokesman among the departing colonists yowled because the Government had promised them Pullman sleepers and here they were having to ride in plain day coaches. Embarking at San Francisco, 39 colonists staged a near-insurrection because they saw none of the radios, sewing machines and washing machines the Government had promised. Other complaints filtered down from the North. The Government had promised full medical service, but there was only one doctor for some 2,000 men, women, children. All children and most adults were reported mildly sick, vastly terrified at the thought of an epidemic. Last week Death came to Matanuska Valley colonists for the first time, taking a 4-year-old ill with measles and pneumonia.

The Government had promised all necessary building equipment, but tools were lacking. One day 24 men showed up as carpenters, found only four hammers available. When some well-digging equipment finally arrived it was discovered that the casing was the right size but the drills were too big to be worked in the casing.

The Government had promised concrete foundations and basements for the cabins, but foundation timbers were being laid flat on the mud.

The Government had promised a fine, 18-teacher school for September, but building had not even begun. A carload of school desks had arrived, however.

Last week 31 of the 400 transient relief workers who went up last April for a six-month stretch of ground-clearing arrived back in Seattle, reported that 178 of their fellows were ready to quit, too. Said one: "Three women colonists begged me to give them my identification tag, so that they could clip their hair, put on men's clothes and get back to the States. They wanted to get back here and work to send their families enough money to break away, too."

Meantime hardworking Colony Manager Don L. Irwin paused only to bark of the colonists' complaints: "Greatly exaggerated." Said a Matanuska sawmill foreman : "Too many colonists are doing too much sitting and fishing."

In Washington, Assistant Administrator Westbrook snapped: "The colonists are much better off already than they were in the Northwest." But on motion of Senators Vandenberg, La Follette and Shipstead, the Senate demanded a full report on colony conditions from Administrator Hopkins, who had dispatched a personal representative to the scene. Already the colonists had won two points: Government commissary prices had been scaled down; Supervising Architect N. Lester Troast had been withdrawn from the project because of "press of business."

Impartial observers last week rated the whole Alaska project as at the very least a first-rate all-around education. Colonists were learning that a Government is human and fallible as any father who impulsively promises more than he can deliver. New Dealers were learning that grown men treated like children may be expected to behave like children.

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