White Sox: The Story of the Reindeer in Alaska
9781465684530
213 pages
Library of Alexandria
Overview
This story will be read by boys and girls in Alaska who know their fathers’ herds of reindeer “like a book,” or better than a book; and it will be read by other boys and girls who never saw a reindeer and think of them only as strange and wonderful creatures that live among the snows in a far off northern region. I hardly know whether we enjoy more hearing the story of our own domestic animals or the story of strange animals that we have never seen. So I can hardly guess whether this story will be read with more interest in Alaska or in Maine and Florida and California. But it will be read with lively interest wherever it may go. When I was Commissioner of Education at Washington, in the Department of the Interior, people often asked me how it happened that my office had anything to do with such a distant and unrelated activity as the reindeer industry. I told them that this was one of the finest examples of real education for real life with which I had ever had to do. I found the subject tremendously interesting. Dr. Sheldon Jackson, who introduced domestic reindeer into Alaska, was then alive and was one of the most vigorous and adventurous and interesting members of my staff. Very soon Mr. Lopp, who was at that time a District Superintendent in Alaska, came on to Washington to arrange with the new Commissioner for the more complete organization of the reindeer industry and for its further development. I found Mr. Lopp one of those rare men who think more than they talk. We very soon got together, became acquainted with each other, and settled down to the work that we had to do together. I learned to appreciate his intimate knowledge of the reindeer business and its use in the making of better living conditions and a better life for those Alaskans who live in the reindeer country. I learned to value his personal devotion to the great work in which he was engaged. The friendship that grew up between us, through our official relations, is one which I have greatly prized, from that time down to the present day; and accordingly I have welcomed this story of his most warmly, and I am sure it will be welcomed by a wide circle of readers.
