578 U. S. BUREAU OF FISHERIES 
or decrease it. Nobody had the answer and no one seemed to have a very clear 
idea of how to go to work to find the answer. It struck me that it would be a 
good thing if our embryo department were to set itself the task of working 
toward the answer of this interesting and practical albacore problem. 
Later, when I read W. F. Thompson’s paper on the Pacific halibut, where he 
answered that very question, in part, for the halibut, I made up my mind we 
needed him for the albacore work. Our success in getting the fisheries tax 
bill through made it possible for us to get Thompson in 1917. Under his 
direction, a scientific fisheries program was built, the basis of which was to 
find out how much fishing a fishery can stand.: 
After the employment of Thompson, and after we had used unsuitable quar- 
ters in southern California for carrying on the albacore work, we came to see 
that any adequate fisheries program should be a continuous one, and that we 
should have quarters of our own. The commission, it happened, had the money, 
so we built a State fisheries laboratory at Terminal Island, near the canneries 
of that district and near Fish Harbor. 
This laboratory stands as a symbol of the scientific fisheries program that 
has been instituted, and it is believed that it will aid greatly in making the 
program a permanent one. Our great difficulty was to get men for our work. 
Mr. Thompson, as director of the laboratory, had to search the universities 
for likely young men with zoological training, and these men he had to train 
in the technique required in the fisheries work. 
A serious problem at this stage was the matter of salaries. We were a part 
of an organization that paid very poor salaries. It was hard to get the salaries 
raised above those being paid in the departments of patrol and fish culture, 
and before we were able to convince the commissioners, the executive officer, 
the State civil service commission, and the State board of control that these 
fishery investigators should get at least as much as a teacher of science in a 
high school, we had lost nearly all our men. But this we have not regretted 
so much, for the fisheries program that we have adopted is a sort of religion 
with us, and wherever those men have gone they have been spreading the 
gospel. 
The matter of salaries has now been largely overcome. About all that re- 
mains for us to do is to develop another lot of enthusiastic investigators and 
trust that we can keep them. Possibly by that time the laboratory will have 
become famous as the producer of those young men who have already gone 
forth, and we will be besieged by young zoologist applicants who are up in 
their mathematics and who delight in statistics, adding machines, rapid calcu- 
lators, and the rest of the modern improvements. 
I have been asked by that department of the National Research Council 
that has to do with States relations how we managed in California to sell our 
scientific work to the fisheries:people. That is not so easy to answer. 
It is of advantage to the fisheries interests to have a State department that 
has sufficient knowledge of their business to help shield them from ill-advised 
legislation. They recognize the scientific work as a method of obtaining at 
least part of the evidence that will prevent unnecessary restrictions being 
placed on the fisheries. They feel that they should be interested in the scien- 
tific work, for they are paying the bill. We did our best to get them, or some 
of them, to understand our work, but with little success. They were unable 
to judge as to whether or not we were making the proper use of the tax they 
were paying. At one time they contended that they could not see how our 
scientific work was benefiting them one nickel, but when they were told by a 
person on whom they looked as an authority that our work was of a high order 
they were satisfied that we were all right. Later, when our work was in 
danger of being curtailed by a governor just elected on an economy plat- 
form, the fisheries people were sure they could not exist without the scientific 
work. 
At this time we had received but scant encouragement from zoologists and 
scientific men within the State, so we were surprised and delighted at the 
splendid letters these men wrote the governor about our work, in response to 
our appeal. From that time on the governor’s office, as well as theemembers 
of the State board of control, took a greater interest in us, and it raiged 
our standing within our own commission. People like you better after they 
have done something for you, and this holds with scientific people just as with 
anyone else. 
One of the biggest of our department problems has been the enforcement of 
the State ‘fish reduction act,’ which would regulate the use of sardines for 
