Volume 2 - ElectricCanadian.com

THE YUKON ADVENTURE 175ground. It was also felt that, as he was the easiest person toreach with a tax, the miner was taxed more heavily than the restof the community. There were also legitimate grounds forcomplaint as to the difficulty of recording claims, and thereseemed room for the modification of certain features in thelaw regarding the representation of claims. Less reasonableat first were the complaints of lack of roads, mail service, andother such things. Though the lack of these was seriouslyfelt, it might have occurred to the agitators that even Romewas not built in a day. Unquestionably the conduct of theGold Commissioner's office gave warrant for complaint atthe outset; but this was largely due to one or two shadycharacters having crept into minor positions in the office, at atime when it proved necessary to augment the staff from localsources to meet the avalanche of business which descendedon it. It was also generally conceded that there was somepetty bribery of certain of these clerks in the Records Officefor the purpose of obtaining unfair preferences, but theCommissioner himself, and the heads of the other governmentdepartments, were men of character and unquestioned honour.Similar difficulties have occurred in other mining campswhere the pressure of government duties was less intense andgave much less excuse for inefficiency or corruption. It wasfound that when proper representations were made to Ottawa,the disposition there was to act promptly and to seek toimprove conditions, and the Government may be said tohave met the situation with vigour and intelligence, whenconsideration is given to the time required and the number oftrained officials needed to cope with these complex difficultieshi a distant mining camp, the population of which had jumpedin a short time from 5,000 to 30,000. During the whole of1898 there was a steady influx of new officials, and one byone, conditions were improved or modified in reasonablyshort order. Crooked clerks were weeded out, good roads andtrails were built, and the service rendered by the Post Office,the Gold Commissioner's Office and other civil departments