Digital Bob Archive

APRIL 1918 - PART 3:

Alaska Food Administrator Royal Gunnison announced current fair food prices - the prices to consumers - for Juneau: Flour, $3.25 to $3.40 per 49-lb.
sack; rice, 8 3/4 to 11 cents a pound; potatoes, 3 1/2 cents; granulated sugar, 10 cents a pound; ranch eggs, 55 cents a dozen; and butter, 55 to 60 cents a pound. Juneau grocers did not usually advertise prices in the newspapers, but the retail store at the Juneau Cold Storage was advertising kippered salmon at 25 cents a pound, halibut at 20 cents and red snapper at 10 cents.

Femmer and Ritter, who owned a dock off Willoughby Avenue and a transfer business, sold their largest team of dray horses to James Kasko, a Tlingit logger who was operating a piling camp near Tenakee. The horses, said to be the biggest span in town, weighed more than 1800 pounds apiece.

On April 6 word was received that the Senate Committee on Territories had approved the nomination of Thomas Christmas Riggs, Jr., to replace John E.A. Strong as Governor of Alaska. This was considered tantamount to confirmation, and that came two days later. It was reported that he would leave Washington, D.C. on April 10 for Alaska.

E.C. Hurlbut, H.T. Tripp and T.E.P. Keegan, members of the Territorial Road Commission, left on the gasboat Tillicum on an inspection trip. Their first stop was to be the head of Tenakee Inlet to look at the portage to Port Frederick. From there they would go to Rocky Pass to determine the advisability of placing buoys to increase the safety of small boat navigation. The Dry Pass section of El Capitan Passage would then be inspected with a view to possible dredging. Before returning to Juneau they planned to visit Ketchikan, Wrangell and Petersburg to inspect road work near those towns.

From the day the United States declared war on Germany, the women of Gastineau Channel, white and Native, had been knitting socks, mittens, sweaters and scarves to be sent to men in the Armed Forces, and particularly to those in Europe. Native women had fashioned dozens of pairs of moccasins which were sent through the Red Cross to hospitals in France. Sent to the troops with the mittens and socks were cigarettes and tobacco and as many cookies and candies as food rationing would permit. Much of that changed on April 10 with a new ruling from the Postmaster General. Parcels going overseas thereafter could contain only articles specifically requested by the addressee. The request must be in writing and must have been approved by his regimental commander. Each parcel must also bear a label reading: \"This parcel contains only articles sent at the approved request of the addressee, which request is enclosed.\" The order was greeted here with disbelief, then outrage and many maledictions on the bureaucracy.