Sir: In Alaska today sixty thousand Indians, Eskimos, and Aleuts are fighting peacefully to protect their lands from expropriation by the state of Alaska. Their struggle ranks in historical importance with the great Indian wars of the West a century ago. Some time in 1970 Congress is expected to enact legislation to settle Alaskan native land claims, and the reasonable demands of these claims offer the United States a priceless opportunity to do justice to its first inhabitants, whose treatment in the past reflects little glory on our nation. As far as justice is concerned, it is all on the side of the natives.
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The curious sight above takes us back to the recruiting and Liberty Bond drives of World War I, to a time when the engines of war were as popular as “preparedness” itself. These gentlemen have just launched a miraculous working model of the then-powerful dreadnought U.S.S. Pennsylvania . They belong to no military-industrial complex except the toy business, and they plan to do their patriotic bit by exhibiting their stuff in stores all over the country.
For the past few years light planes, boats, and snowmobiles have been taking hunters to the polar ice cap in such numbers that the polar bear may be threatened with extinction. The animal is being killed as never before. Even with strict regulation, the annual kill in Alaska (about four hundred) has more than tripled in twenty years and brings to the Alaskan economy over $600,000 a year. Of the five interpolar countries— Canada, United States, Norway, Denmark (Greenland), U.S.S.R.—only Russia fully protects the polar bear. In Norway a hunter can trap bears by setting a baited gun. This often means cubs are left to die after the sow has taken the bait and been shot. With a snowmobile, a whole string of such traps can easily be maintained. The snow-mobile has also become standard equipment for Eskimos and Indians in Canada, where by far the greatest number of bears are killed—six hundred a year.
Sir: … You told precisely the story that the National Audubon Society has been preaching: that conservation is no less than the battle to keep our planet livable and its environment worth living in. Articles like yours can help alert America, and conservation organizations like ours can help point the way for citizen action. As a native Kentuckian, I was particularly interested in your story on my old friend and former student Harry Caudill and his fight to curb strip mining and to save the beautiful Red River Gorge— two fights in which the National Audubon Society and its Kentucky chapters have been deeply involved.
Sir: I am an enthusiastic reader of AMERICAN HERITAGE magazine and read each issue from cover to cover. Also I am a conservationist and support all efforts to preserve our environment in a livable condition and to correct the pollution of air, water, and land while still carrying out the necessary operations for life. In your December, 1969, issue you depict a logging scene in your second full page spread which I would guess was in the redwood region, although it could easily be Douglas fir, ponderosa pine, or other species. The implication is that this is despoiling our land and forests, while in fact it is as much of a harvesting scene as a cornfield after picking. Modern forest management has found that clear cutting is desirable to get the maximum forest reproduction in most coniferous species. In a few years the scene you show will be a beautiful stand of young trees. In seventy to eighty years it will be ready to harvest, if this is redwood, and the yield will surpass the crop just harvested.
Sir: There are not enough words available to praise AMERICAN HERITAGE magazine. As a charter subscriber, devoted supporter, and unofficial salesman for many years, I have been impressed that the quality of “our” magazine continues to move up while others decline.… How do I express adequate congratulations for your section on conservation and environmental issues i’ Looking at the 1970’s as the “environmental decade,” the new section takes on a particular significance. Continued high quality articles such as those in the December, 1969, issue will contribute to the public’s awareness of the environmental problems we face as a nation. Public understanding of the connection between America’s heritage and its natural endowments is imperative if we are to save both for future generations.
The Hudson’s Bay Company was launched in an unsurmountably upper-crust ambiance, as indicated by the quality of its first three governors: Prince Rupert (who headed the company from 1670 to 1682); His Royal Highness, James, Duke of York, later King James II (16831685); and John Churchill, later the first Duke of Marlborough (1685–1692). Although all three were men of action who fought in the wars that beset their time, they viewed Hudson Bay primarily as an investment, and none of them ever made the slightest move to go and see the fabulous property. Rupert, who died in 1682, was chief author of the charter granted to the company in 1670; James’s governorship was terminated when he mounted the throne; Churchill—who was to become one of England’s great soldiers and ancestor of the late Prime Minister—lost the job when he intrigued with the exiled James in 1692.
In the year 1807 in the town of Derryfield, New Hampshire, a gentleman by the name of Samuel Blodeet proclaimed: “For as the country increases in population, we must have manufactories, and here at my canal will be a manufacturing town— the Manchester of America! ” Blodget (right) built his canal around the Amoskeag Falls on the Merrimack River, and in 1810 Derryfield (population: 615) indeed took Manchester as its new name. But the Amoskeag Cotton and Woolen Manufactory that evolved there would doubtless have amazed even the prophetic Mr. Blodget. Construction of new mills began in 1831, backed by Boston money. Two years later President Andrew Jackson paid a visit and was much impressed by “all these spindles in motion.” By 1845 Manchester had a population of ten thousand, and forty years after that the Amoskeag complex was the biggest concentration of textile mills in the country, if not the world. No other place could match it. By 1915 the mills were employing fifteen thousand people and were turning out cloth at an incredible fifty miles per hour.
For a very long time it has been supposed that man could adjust himself to almost anything in the way of speed, noise, or financial outlay, just to get from one place to another in the least possible time. But the giant supersonic transport, the S.S.T., as it is known, is clearly something else again, and though President Nixon and others have said that the nation simply must have the superplane to maintain technological superiority in the skies, a growing number of Americans are questioning whether the plane itself is really necessary and, indeed, whether our national commitment to build it may be the beginning of a historic blunder of phenomenal proportions. In fact, Friends of the Earth, a new national conservation group with headquarters in New York, has singled out the S.S.T. as its first major target.