ALASKA FISHERY AND FUR-SEAL INDUSTRIES, 1920. 153 



population. Their lives are subject to the most severe conditions of 

 existence. Largrely they are dependent on the resources of the 

 country. To deprive these people of one of their most valued and 

 most important resources would seem under such circumstances 

 peculiarly indefensible. The principle should be adopted with regard 

 to the interior rivers of Alaska that no commercial interests should 

 be permitted to exploit them until it should be demonstrated that a 

 portion of their salmon run could be spared without detriment to the 

 run itself and without encroaching on the supply needed by the 

 populations that inhabit the valleys of these rivers. And if there is 

 any question whether the salmon run in a given stream is adequate to 

 supply the demands of commercial operations as well as the needs of 

 the inhabitants, the doubt should at once be resolved in favor of the 

 people. The subject should not be one for experiment. Canneries 

 should not be permitted to establish themselves on these streams 

 while we calmly await the result. They may create havoc before the 

 evidence thereof is clearly shown, and in the meantime they will 

 have secured those highly prized "vested rights" which make their 

 position difficult of attack. 



A floating cannery operated by the Carlisle Packing Co. is already 

 established at the mouth of the Yukon, and it becomes appropriate 

 to inquire whether the continued operation of this cannery is com- 

 patible with the best interests of the Yukon Valley. It is evident 

 that if the fish re(juired by this company can without question be 

 safely spared, the cannery should be welcomed, for it provides 

 much needed freight for a transportation company that supplies 

 the Yukon and it offers much needed employment for a limited 

 number of natives and others during a brief period of the summer. 

 But if the operation of the cannery should threaten encroachment 

 on the supply of -salmon needed in the interior it should be com- 

 pelled to close, as no advantage to its few employees could possibly 

 compensate for widespread inconvenience, distress, and suffering. 



As a result of the Yukon hearing, given in Seattle, AVash., No- 

 vember 2'), 1918, the Secretary of Commerce promulgated an order 

 that limited the pack of canned salmon to 30,000 cases in any year 

 from the Yukon Kiver, embracing all waters of its delta to and in- 

 cluding the area 500 yards outside each mouth or slough of the 

 delta at mean high tide. Beyond this area of 500 yards outside the 

 mouth or mouths of the river the Secretary of Commerce exercises 

 no jurisdiction, the Congress having failed to confer it upon him. 

 He is therefore helpless to extend protection to channels between 

 shoals and islands off the mouth of any river, although such chan- 

 nels may be regular migration routes of the salmon bound for that 

 river and as much open to attack as any part of the river channels. 



Kealizing this deficiency of the laws, the Carlisle Packing Co. in 

 1919 put up approximately the maximum pack inside the river, 

 and then j)roceeded nearly to double this with salmon equally bound 

 for the Yukon which they captured outside the mouth of the river. 

 In doing this they were wholly within their legal rights, but they 

 evinced thereby an indifference to the obvious jmrport of the order, 

 which was to provide for a strictly limited pack of Yukon fish. In 

 making this increased pack they hnj)i)ened on a year when the run 

 was poor and the fishing conditions were excellent. They were 



