The 49th State

It was time for the Senate vote that could add a 49th star to the U.S. flag. Interior Secretary Fred Seaton, getting word that diehard opposition, mostly Southern, had gasped its last, rushed from a steak dinner to Capitol Hill. Alaska's Governor Mike Stepovich excused himself to his dinner hosts, sped to the Capitol. The Senate roll was called, and the U.S. Senate last week voted 64 (31 Democrats, 33 Republicans) to 20 to admit Alaska to the Union. Barring only the foregone conclusions of a presidential signature and an Alaska referendum next month, the U.S. had its first new state since Arizona entered on Feb. 14, 1912.

Within moments after the Senate vote, the news flashed 3,500 miles. Scores of homemade 49-star flags broke out across Alaska.* In Skagway, women paraded wearing embroidered badges: "Bigger than Texas, Better than California--God's Country." On the western shores, in Nome and Kotzebue, the populace torched big, bright bonfires that they hoped could be seen across the strait in Siberia. Even the antistatehood Alaskans, mostly in Sitka and the capital city of Juneau, joined in the bell ringing and dancing.

Yet anti-statehooders still found time for apprehension about the problems ahead, e.g., new, higher taxes to pay for state services. Scoffed Anchorage's bewhiskered antistatehood leader, John Manders: "Did you ever see anybody stop a crowd on its way to a hanging? Wait till the honeymoon is over and the taxes arrive . . ."

Even the most enthusiastic advocates of statehood realized that stern tests of responsibility had just begun. Along with the statehood referendum, Alaska will hold political primaries next month, elect two U.S. Senators, a U.S. Representative, a Governor and a secretary of state in November. Key job: the governorship, with great power under the new Alaska constitution, including that of some 200 pivotal appointments. Would G.O.P.-appointed Territorial Governor Mike Stepovich (TIME, June 9) make the grade at the polls? He is popular enough even though Alaska is Democratic-minded. But if he fails, he can find comfort in his oft-repeated words of the past: "My hope is that I will be the last appointed Governor of Alaska." He is that.

* Neither law nor custom bars flying 48-star flags or even 13-star flags. In 1916 President Woodrow Wilson gave the U.S. Navy responsibility for planning changes in flag design. President Eisenhower will probably follow Wilson's executive order, hand the problem to the Navy, which in turn may appoint a design commission.

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