Holder. — Protection at Santa Catalina 117 



and members of this society, surrender. They failed in 

 their petition by ten thousand votes. This leaves the Cal- 

 ifornians to vote on the referendum on the 3rd of Novem- 

 ber; there is still the danger that it may be carried and 

 that as a result an army of market hunters will arise and 

 the wild ducks will be a thing of the past on the Pacific 

 coast. 1 



To illustrate the devastating nature of their brigandage 

 in making their political deals to accomplish their end, 

 the agents of this so-called Protective Association, when 

 they reached the Port of Los Angeles, promised to put in 

 their initiative a clause whereby the Santa Catalina Fish 

 Reserve law would be revoked. I merely mention this to 

 show that these men, all of whom were business men of 

 San Francisco, would not hesitate to strike down the in- 

 terests of another set of men or utterly repudiate the 

 opinions of the National Government and the various ex- 

 perts who have expressed their views on the subject. I 

 will, however, state that the secretary of this institution, 

 when I explained the situation to him, gave me his word 

 that he would remove it from the bill, which he did later 

 on, and then came the defeat of the entire petition owing 

 to the fact mainly, that the Hotel Men's Association of 

 Southern California repudiated it and stood with us. 



I have mentioned this as it seems to me it may be of 

 interest to the distinguished members of this society in 

 illustrating the point that there is a vital need in this 

 country of public education, on the subject of the eco- 

 nomic value of the fisheries. I mean by this that the 

 masses of the people are absolutely ignorant of the great 

 fundamental questions relating to this subject and that 

 only this can explain the fact that an association of this 

 kind could have secured 33,000 signatures to a petition 



'They won by 8,000 votes, but we carried southern California by a 

 large vote— 58,000.— C. F. H. 



Note: In 1914 the Santa Catalina Fish Reservation was again 

 thrown open to netters on the ground of class legislation, and the work 

 is being done all over again in the legislature of 1915, with the possibility 

 of defeat by the combinations of the fish market men of Los Angeles 

 #nd San Francisco. — C.F.H. 



