“Not with traps. Traps don’t just catch salmon. They exterminate them. Fishing is a fine thing, it could make Alaska rich and prosperous. But pretty soon there won’t be any fish to catch or trap. They grab too many of them every year, and every year there are less. The trap is there, it works day and night, no one needs to see to it, all they need to do is to come out and pull up the web floor when the trap is full. Who cares? The cannery people don’t care, the owners, I mean, they live in Seattle or San Francisco or Chicago or even New York. Ten years more—fifteen—twenty—then it will be finished. No one stops them.”

In her naïveté she demanded, “Why don’t you stop them! You can write more editorials in the Northern Light. You can stop anything you don’t like, that you think is wrong.”

“Money, my darling child. Money. Millions of salmon make millions of money for the people who catch them.”

“But not you.”

“No. You know better than that. For the canneries.”

“But if it’s wrong?”

“Smart men in the capital at Washington are hired to make it seem right. It’s a little complicated to explain to you. It’s a kind of trading they do. You do this for us, we’ll do that for you. Congressmen and Senators, and smart lawyers, and Big Business men. It isn’t considered dishonest, it’s called lobbying. I don’t want you to get a wrong idea of your country, Christine, it’s the most wonderful free country in the world. But there are certain things. Alaska, you see, has no standing, it has no vote, it has no power to defend itself, it is a big strong giant tied and bound and gagged.”

“Like Gargantua.”

He laughed his great rollicking laugh. “You’ve been reading my Rabelais.”

They chugged back to the cannery, the great silver mass of fish gleaming in the scow. Thor and the crew seemed content. “Three or four more like this catch,” Thor said, “and your schooling for this coming year will be paid for.”

Miserably she said, “It isn’t worth it. I’d rather never know how to read or add two and two.”

He stared at her in amazement. “Isn’t worth what!”

“How can I go to college—how can I have anything, when I know you’ve worked for it like a—like a horse!”

“You’ve never seen a horse.” This was true. To her consternation, he was laughing. “Now if you said worked like a dog, an Alaskan would know what you mean.”

In a fury she said, “You’re laughing at me! At least Grampa Czar doesn’t laugh at me.”

“Christine, my darling child, I wasn’t laughing at you.”

“You were pulling and hauling like those slaves in the pictures that hauled the stones for the pyramids. I can’t stand it! Why don’t you use a lobby, then? What’s a lobby, anyway?”

“Here, we’ll look it up in the dictionary. Now then, it says, simply: A Lobbyist. A person who tries to get legislators to introduce or vote for measures favorable to a special interest that he represents.”