306 Fortieth Annual Meeting 



tion is a question of saving fish life altogether, but it is a question of 

 clean, decent, right living. In England it is incumbent upon every city, 

 village and hamlet to see to it that the rivers are just as pure below 

 their sites as above. This is the reason they have salmon fishing in 

 their streams there. 



Dr. George W. Field, Boston, Mass. : We have had an exceedingly 

 acute condition in Massachusetts, and, indeed, in all New England. In 

 Massachusetts in the last three years we have sent two cases to the 

 Supreme Court through the organized effort on the part of the saw- 

 mill people to fight the sawdust law. They claim that the object of the 

 state in preventing the introduction of sawdust was depriving them of 

 rights which they had had since the settlement of the country. The 

 Supreme Court held it was not possible for a mill owner to acquire 

 such rights against the state; that even if they had been dumping 

 the sawdust in for 20 or 200 years they did not thereby acquire the 

 right to do so as against the rights of the state. So that matter is 

 pretty definitely settled. 



A case more recently decided was that in taking into consideration 

 the value of a stream as a fishing stream as compared with the manu- 

 facturing value, we were not to consider the actual number of fish in 

 the stream but to consider its potential capacity for producing food 

 fish. Judge Akin, of the Superior Court, who handed down the 

 opinion, said he had visited the stream in person, and that while he be- 

 lieved thoroughly that the stream would not produce at the present 

 time half a dozen trout in the course of a year, there was no question 

 but that this stream, if properly handled and put into its pristine con- 

 dition, would be exceedingly valuable to the people of the state. There- 

 fore, he believed the commissioners were right in considering the po- 

 tential capacity of the stream. That settled another important ques- 

 tion, for the reason that our law says that if the commissioners assert 

 that the fishing in the stream is of more value than the manufacturing 

 interests, the pollution of the stream shall be prohibited, so far as 

 sawdust is concerned. 



But the law as it formerly existed was utterly inadequate. The 

 manufacturer would be prohibited from putting in sawdust, and at the 

 same time he might put in shavings, and when we prevented them from 

 putting in sawdust they went on and put in ten times the quantity of 

 shavings. The ultimate efifects, of oourse, were worse from the shavings 

 than from the sawdust. 



The last Legislature passed a law which actually prohibited the in- 

 troduction of any substance which would in any way directly or in- 

 directly aft'ect the food of the fish or affect the fish themselves. It 

 provided for a public hearing and also for a review of the conditions 

 by the courts if the manufacturers so decided. Extreme pressure was 

 placed upon Governor Draper to veto this bill. The Governor himself 

 is a man interested in large manufacturing enterprises. He saw the 

 bearing of the thing upon the manufacturers and it went through his 

 mind, without doubt, that if he vetoed the bill he would make himself 



