MARCH 27, 1919 - KENT'S FAREWELL LETTER TO THE SEWARD GATEWAY

ROCKWELL KENT WILDERNESS CENTENNIAL JOURNAL

100 YEARS LATER

by Doug Capra © 2018-19

Thursday -- March 27, 1919

BELOW – Kent’s Praise for Alaska farewell letter as it appeared in the March 17, 1919 Seward Gateway. BELOW – A transcription of the letter with my comments follows.

Father and son leave Fox Island on March 18, 1919, and stay in Seward for eleven days. On March 27, the Seward Gateway publishes Kent's farewell letter.

Seward Gateway, Seward, Alaska. March 27, 1919

PRAISE FOR ALASKA

To go from the Eastern states to the West is like opening your window to fresh air; to leave the Western and enter Alaska is to step at once straight out of doors. Here in this great, resourceful, unpeopled country there is the Freedom that the crowded world is fighting for. You have that, native and growing wild, which statesmen will forever with all their wisdom in the contrivance and piling up of laws fail to achieve. The freedom of a country that is big enough for every man to walk alone on his own path, the freedom that comes from men having their own work to do in their own way, that, by Heaven, is what you still have here in Alaska and that you should clinch for all time against. You have a manhood in this land that is rare, men who are here because by their initiative and force they differed from the rest of men. These are the men who are fit to lay down the foundation of a state and it is they who should determine the destiny of Alaska.

ABOVE – These are the kind of hunters, trappers and miners Kent meets in Seward, people who live the kind of free life he admires. At right is Charles Emswiler, a friend of Olson’s who stops in occasionally at Fox Island. At the time he is probably fox farming on an island near Kodiak. Men like Elmswiler had to be versatile to survive in Alaska. BELOW – A more professional version of Elmswiler shown on his Seward Water-Front Pass. Resurrection Bay Historical Society.

Freedom and liberty are themes that run through Wilderness. They are motifs meandering through Kent’s life. He must live life as he sees fit, experiencing all he can. He is the center of the universe and everything and everyone circles around him. As his teacher Robert Henri taught him, art isn’t something you do sequestered away in our studio. Art is the product of a full, active life. More than Monhegan Island, even more than Newfoundland – Alaska is the epitome, the extreme example of the freedom Kent craves. Olson, and the Seward pioneers he meets, symbolize the human essence of liberty. In this first paragraph of his Praise for Alaska, Kent warns Seward of “the dangers that the changes and growth of the future will produce.” The first bill in the U.S. Congress advocating for Alaska statehood came in 1916. The rare Alaska manhood Kent observes differs from the rest of the country. It’s these Alaskan pioneers who have the strength, power and initiative “to lay the foundation of a state.”

BELOW – Article from the April 7, 1916 issue of the Owensboro Inquirer (Kentucky).

With the selection of Seward in 1915 as the terminus for the new Government Railroad, rapid change came to the town. It had incorporated as a city in 1912, the same year Alaska became a territory under the Second Organic Act. But now in 1915 with workers, horses, supplies and equipment arriving in port from the recently completed Panama Canal, Seward’s growth exploded. Alaska is a resource state, and historically its economy has been one of boom and bust. The three years before Kent arrived saw an increase in population; a surge in investment with many new businesses; a rise in property values; and new and higher taxes. More automobiles appeared on the streets with a need for regulation. The U.S. Navy in the Pacific desperately needed coal – most of which came from the East Coast. There were no coaling stations along the West Coast and Seward vied with other ports for that economic prize. Many newcomers arrived with promoting change. An important theme in frontier history is the conflict between those who arrive to get away from the rest of the world and those who want to bring it with them. The town split over the politics of all this – and in small isolated towns politics mixes with both social and economic domains. The Alaska Evening Post appeared to compete with the Seward Gateway. The Seward Chamber of Commerce essentially fell apart. Interestingly, the town elected a newcomer as mayor in 1915 and 1916 – Charles Antonio Myers. Apparently, even the old timers felt a need for someone they could trust who didn’t have too much local baggage to weigh him down.

BELOW – Article from the April 29, 1915 issue of the Fort Wayne Weekly Sentinel (Indiana). The month before Seward had been selected as the terminus for the new government railroad.

The U.S. entry into World War I in April 1917 caused more changes. Railroad work slowed due to a diminished work force. The war effort required more local unity. The two newspapers merged and the local Chamber of Commerce began to reorganize. Seward lost its designation as headquarters for the new railroad – that went to Anchorage. And savvy businessmen began to see Anchorage’s rapid growth as a threat to Seward’s past economic dominance. A battle ensued between the two ports over coal and which port would prevail. This is the situation Kent and Rockie wandered into in August 1918.

ABOVE – Fourth Avenue (Main Street, also known as Broadway) circa 1920.  Resurrection Bay Historical Society.

Kent’s letter continues:

What concern is it of yours what has been done outside? This is a new country and it should from the very start be animated by a finer spirit and trurer {sic} ideals than the world outside has ever known. Unless the child be better than his parents progress has stopped. When I first arrived in Alaska in 1971, a popular bumper sticker read: “We don’t give a damn now they do it Outside.” Another theme in Alaska history is its perception as a colony used and abused by Outside economic interests. Until the oil boom, Alaska has never been able to raise the kind of capital needed for large economic projects. Today with its large Permanent Fund worth tens of billions of dollars, the state has more clout – but the economy is still over eighty percent based upon oil.

A citizenry more fitted for self determination or more deserving of unlimited freedom in their own lives will never again be in this territory. The mass of men the world around are sheep; here all men are Leaders. Every law that limits their freedom in their own affairs is tyranny. Part of this may be Kent’s support for Alaska statehood, which would give them more control over their destinies. But as the push for statehood in the 1950’s showed, a significant number of old timers were against it.  How would Alaska be able to raise enough revenue to support all the benefits federal money now provided? Taxes wouldn’t do it alone. It wasn’t until massive oil fields were discovered in the late 1960’s that the oil boom really began.

BELOW – The year 1968 marks a seminal year in Alaska history with the discovery of the potential for large oil fields. This article is from the Dec. 23, 1968 issue of the Tampa Bay Times (St. Petersburg).

Kent continues:

It's getting late to start your cultivation of Freedom. Dry rot and contamination from without are already at its roots. Unless you choke it now it will overwhelm you, and with the influx of new thousands from the crowded states your strong freedom will vanish under the trival {sic} culture of lesser men. The man who forces abstinence upon his neighbor, the man who hopes for the registering and ticketing of free citizens, the amateur sleuth skillful in all business but his own, all these are already among you, militarists in lambs clothing! There's a menace of Kaiserism in democracy, and that's the danger even here. A free people will build its jails for meddlers. This is what got Kent into trouble, although many of the old timers probably agreed with him. But not many of those “newcomers from the crowded states…” Kent refers here specifically to the Alaska Bone Dry Law passed in 1916 which went into effect on January 1, 1918. As with many Alaska port towns, Seward found a way to slip around the law. It was a game. Even U.S. Deputy Marshal Isaac Evans probably understood the rules. He and his wife were much respected in Seward, even though he went after the bootleggers with all his resources.

BELOW – Isaac Evans’s Water-Front Pass for 1918. Evans was a well-respected Alaskan lawman. Evans issued and signed all the the passes, including his own. He and his wife contributed much to Seward’s political, economic and social life. In the fall of 1919 he was gunned down on the streets of Seward while trying to arrest a 20-year-old who had murdered a prostitute in Anchorage and attempted to hid out in the railroad work camps around Seward. For the full story, see my book The Spaces Between: Stories from the Kenai Mountains to the Kenai Fjords. Resurrection Bay Historical Society

Seward had two years to gather as much booze as it could to stow away or lower into secret pockets along the shores of Resurrection Bay. Kent also attacks the military draft, which probably even rankled some old timers. But the war was over yet the draft still continued – and as the lists of dead and wounded continued to fill the newspapers people began to better grasp the horror and uselessness of it all. Last, Kent goes after the busybodies, those who just won’t mind their own business. Part of the frontier code is not to ask too many questions of people about their past. Many come to the frontier to reinvent themselves, to start over in a place where they’ll be judged by who they are now. The local snoopers Kent refers to are those spreading the rumors of a German spy on Fox Island; those ridiculing and harassing the oldest generation of pioneers like Olson; those wanting to know everything about everybody. He calls them militarists in lambs clothing! Then – just like we might expect from Rockwell Kent – he pushes the envelope. There's a menace of Kaiserism in democracy, and that's the danger even here. A free people will build its jails for meddler. Dictators are dictators, whether they emerge from the left or the right. Instead of the draft resistors and bootleggers in jail – perhaps it should be the meddlers, those who want to take away our freedoms.

Kent ends his letter:

In giving you this praise and criticism of an outsider it is with no claim to knowledge of conditions here. These are impressions of Alaska upon senses that are new to it. The vast wilderness of Alaska, the glory of what is free in it's {sic} life, and above all it's {sic} strong, freedom-loving manhood show the land fit to be the foundation of a great, free state. It is the only land that I have ever known to which I have wanted to return. {Signed} Rockwell Kent. Wisely, Kent provides a rhetorical flourish here at the end admitting he himself is a newcomer who doesn’t claim any real knowledge of conditions in the territory. Wise – but it’s too late. He’s stripped the militarists of their lamb’s clothing; he’s compared them to the Kaiser; he’s sentenced them to prison for their meddling. How dare he, this Germanophile, socialist, artsy, hermit who lives with an old Swede on Fox Island with his 9-year-old son who can count to ten in German!

March 27, 2019 is not only the 100^th anniversary of the publication of Kent’s letter in Seward Gateway – it’s also the 55^th anniversary of the 1964 Good Friday Alaska Earthquake. In Kent’s time here, Seward was used to occasional substantial jolts from earthquakes. And this March 27, 1919 letter of Kent’s to the Seward Gateway, although not as physically destructive as the big earthquake 45 years later – still provided a bit of excitement and distraction for the bustling railroad town on Resurrection Bay. How can Kent’s letter go unanswered, many thought? And they were right. The next day they got their answer.

BELOW -- USGS Photo -- "Looking north along the town's coastline from about what is now the Branson Pavilion." A 1970 study by the National Academy of Sciences (NAS) observed: "On Saturday, Seward began to take stock of its condition. Twelve were dead. The quake and the fires and waves that followed had wiped out the city's entire economic base."