ALASKA FISHERY AND FUR-SEAL INDUSTRIES, 1920. 153 
population. Their lives are subject to the most severe conditions of 
existence. Largely 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 required 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, Wash., No- 
vember 20, 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 River, 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. 
Realizing this deficiency of the laws, the Carlisle Packing Co. in 
1919 put up approximately the maximum pack inside the river, 
and then proceeded 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 purport of the order, 
which was to provide for a strictly limited pack of Yukon fish. In 
making this increased pack they happened on a year when the run 
was poor and the fishing conditions were excellent. They were 
