70 THE MICHIGAN ACADEMY OF SCIENCE. 



tion for good fisliing-. The eomniissioner of Indiaua wrote ine he was 

 sure that at least |2()0,000 of Indiana fishermen's money was expended 

 in our State every year. 



The <iuestion may be asked: "What part has the Fish Commission 

 played in this?" When the commission was created there were but two 

 or three streams in the extreme northern ])art of the Lower Peninsula 

 in which brook trout were native; today there are 1,500 streams in which 

 they will be found, and in several hundred of them good fishing; besides, 

 bass, Avall-eyed pike, lake trout, etc., ar^ found in a large nund^er of 

 lakes where they were not before. It is the direct .work of the commis- 

 sion that has made the State famous for its trout fishing. If any in- 

 dividual or corporation owned the whole State, they would spend a 

 much greater sum than is allowed the commission, simply as a business 

 proposition. But the commission does not in reality cost the State a 

 dollar. Aside from the great amount of money it is benefited by, as I 

 have shown, it is actually ahead in the amount of taxes collected by 

 reason of the work of the commission. To prove this, I will take one 

 stream with which I am personally familiar as an example. About 

 twelve miles below Grayling, on the An Sable river, there are several 

 families who live on what they get out of tlie fishermen. This is known 

 as Stevaus settlement. For several years they had no school because 

 the lumbermen had stripped all the land of pine, and the land had re- 

 verted back to the State for delinquent taxes, and there was nothing 

 with Avhich to support a school. AVithin the last three or four years every 

 forty acres, for twenty miles along- this stream, has been taken up by 

 fishermen, taxes are paid on the land, and last year they had seven 

 months of school in that neighborhood. What is true of this stream, is 

 true of a great many others, and I assert, without fear of contradiction, 

 that the State today is collecting in cash, that it would not otherwise 

 collect, more taxes on account of the work of the Commission than the 

 Commission costs the State. 



It is stated in the Maine reports that the fish and game are about as 

 valuable to the state as the agricultural interests. The reports of the 

 state of New York show that |o,21o,-l() was expended last year in the 

 Adirondacks alone, by tourists and sportsmen. True, a great ju-opor- 

 tion of this is expended by summer visitors at the fine hotels, but what 

 has been the means of building so many little hotels and summer resorts 

 in northern iMichigan if not the fishing? Senator Gurney stated, on the 

 floor of the Senate, that a fine hotel had been built at Hart. Oceana 

 county, because so many fishermen came there. The Indian river, for 

 instance, is strung with cottages from one end to the other, and all on 

 account of the fishing, and they all i)ay taxes. Yet some i)eople grumble 

 because the State a}»]»r()itriates |o5,000 for the pro]>agation of fish. Fifty 

 thousand dollars a year ought to be put into the regular budget so that 

 the Commission could know what they could depend on from year to 

 year and jdan ahead accordingly. It has been stated that an acre of 

 water Avill })roduce as much food as an acre of good land under favorable 

 conditions. In many places like SaginaAV Bay, Thunder Bay, Green Bay, 

 etc., one acre of Avater supplies as much food as a half dozen acres of 

 land, but, like the land, if Avater is not planted, fertilized, protected and 

 cared for. it Avill run out and become non-producing, and weeds will grow 

 where food ought to groAv. 



