curtailed. During the
last session of the Yukon Council, I am glad to state, the ordinance
licensing these places was repealed after a hard and bitter struggle.
This does not mean that the evils are entirely eradicated. Our great
difficulty is to get evidence. It is, however, more difficult now to
carry on evil businesses." The law in the Yukon as elsewhere was
fulfilling the function assigned to it in the famous words of Gladstone,
"A good law is intended to make it easier for people to do right and
harder for them to do wrong."

That great mining frontier, with its money-mad and heterogeneous
population (albeit there were many splendid people there), was at the
same time the problem and the glory of the men in scarlet and gold. It
was their problem because the criminal class which always makes a dead
set on a frontier was determined from the outset to make the Klondike
country a sort of hell on earth, and it was their glory because they
prevented the thug and the outlaw from getting a foothold where the old
flag flew. There also the lawless individual sought to get away to some
other clime, for he said there as he said in the mountains, "These
blamed Mounted Police won't give a man a chance." That was one of the
biggest testimonials ever given to guardians of the law in any country.

It is not at all generally known that a real "red" revolution that aimed
at seizing the banks and mines with the hope of dividing the spoil
amongst the "revolutionists" was planned in the Yukon a decade or more
before the Bolshevistic terror was let loose in Europe. "Soapy Smith"
the unsavoury but reckless gunman of Skagway, had developed a school of
imitators. There were probably a couple of thousand or so of these tough
characters scattered all through the north country camps, and the idea
was to rally them to a centre, overpower the few policemen, establish a
sort of "liberty" government, seize the money and anything else that
could be carried, divide it up and then scatter to the outside before
any reinforcements could come to the aid of the Mounted Police from the
East. It was an ambitious programme and the "revolutionists" had gone
some distance in their preparations. They had arms stored in certain
localities, they had a seal for the temporary government (which seal I
have personally seen), they had maps prepared indicating the centres to
be attacked as well as a record of the Mounted Police posts with the
number of men in each.