As I examined old newspaper accounts mentioning pioneer Alaskan Congressional delegate Daniel Alexander (Dan) Sutherland, I noticed one consistent trend.
If any bigwigs from the Lower 48 were in sight, Sutherland wanted to fight them.
Alaskan voters kept this Republican delegate in office from 1921 to 1930 because they viewed him as one of them.
Most of his many years in Alaska were spent as a fishing boat laborer panning for gold. In fact, he came to Alaska in 1898 from his native Canada along with other Gold Rush stampeders.
What really set his dander off in the early 1920s were claims from owners of the giant canneries that roving gangs of pirates were cutting into their profits.
A Washington State member of Congress named Senator Miles Poindexter caved to the complainers from Puget Sound and Oregon, beseeching the Treasury, Commerce and Justice Departments to bust these alleged trap pirates.
Secretary of Commerce Herbert Hoover lent a sympathetic ear to the canneries in 1922.
All this talk of piracy wasn’t exactly fresh news.
After all, Alaska Governor Thomas Riggs, Jr. in 1919, authorized two Alaska sub-chasers and bureau of fisheries to halt all boats lifting traps to determine if they operated lawfully. He also wanted the canners to supply the names of all boats authorized to set traps.
Sutherland said he had enough by September of 1922. For two years he tried to overturn Secretary Hoover’s power to make rules and regulations for the perpetuation of the salmon supply.
The Juneau Empire in turn blasted Sutherland as anti-progressive, calling his position “strictly reactionary.”
“Mr. Sutherland’s bill would cause the abolition of most of the fish traps of Southeastern Alaska,” stated the Empire’s editor.
Sutherland the next two years went after the salmon packing corporations. He was livid after Warren G. Harding’s choice of attorney general, Harry Micajah Daugherty, declared all-out war on Alaskan fish pirates. (Daugherty also was nearly impeached after his critics accused him of corruption, although he survived two hung juries when he went to trial on charges of graft and fraud),
Sutherland termed the cannery’s war on fish pirates “preposterous and malignantly false” in a protest to the Department of Justice. He blamed the cannery bosses for threatening the salmon supply by permitting excessively high catches.
He complained that the canneries themselves were “the real criminals” and attempting to draw scrutiny away from their own shifty practices.
“If the courts will punish the arrogant, selfish and avaricious pirates of Chicago, Seattle, Portland and San Francisco, who have always in the past and do at present consider themselves immune from punishment . . . it will create wholesome regard for the laws by all classes in Alaska.”
Sutherland’s constituents loved his ire and dubbed him “Fighting Dan.”
Sutherland moved to Pennsylvania with his wife Hilda after his service to the territory ended. He died March 24, 1955.
Hank Nuwer is an adjunct professor teaching journalism at the University of Alaska, Fairbanks.