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cerned in the Columbia River. Idaho and Montana are not seriously in- 
terested in the salmon, but Washington ard Oregon are both vitally in- 
terested in the salmon fisheries of that stream. But these two States 
have never been able to agree upon concurrent legislation which adequately 
protects the fisheries, and things have gone from bad to worse. ‘wo years 
ago an effort was made by certain people interested to restrict the taking 
of salmon in the upper Columbia by cutting out the use of certain kinds 
of apparatus. ‘This matter was referred to the people in Oregon, and at 
the same time those who were interested in the fisheries in the uppr Co- 
lumbia had a similar question submitted to the people stopping fishing 
in the lower river, and a very curious result followed. The people said it 
would be a good thing to restrict fishing in both parts of the river, so both 
amendments carried, and the inevitable result followed that neither is 
enforced, illustrating very clearly the impossibility of two or more States 
agreeing upon adequate measures in questions of that kind. 
Then the question came up as to the control of the fisheries in inter- 
national waters. The question there has for many years been a serious 
cne, particularly on Lake Erie. That lake has abutting on it four States 
on this side of the line 
Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and New York— 
and the province of Ontario on the other—five political units that are all 
interested in the fisheries of Lake Erie, and no two having the same laws, 
so that at one time it would be legal to fish at a certain distance from the 
shore and with certain apparatus off that narrow portion of Pennsylvania 
which fronts on Lake Erie, and just beyond that narrow strip in Ohio or 
New York it would be illegal, and there was constant difficulty to keep 
the fishermen of one State within the strip in which they had a right to 
fish; and the regulations on our side were in every case entirely different 
from those on the Canadian side, so that friction followed there. It was 
impossible for the individual States to handle this question, and in that 
way the question of federal control came up. 
In addition to these questions, and of more recent development per- 
haps, has come the question of the desirability of federal control of inter- 
state waters and other waters in the matter of public health. We have a 
good illustration of the necessity for this in the Potomac River. Wash- 
ington City has sometimes suffered from an epidemic of typhoid fever, 
and investigation has shown again and again that the source of infection 
was not in the District of Columbia, but was brought from some place 
