16 American Fisheries Society 



be remembered that laws are but the crystallized expres- 

 sion of public opinion, and if there be no public opinion 

 favoring a law, or if public opinion be opposed to a law, 

 merely placing a legislative act on the statute book will 

 not produce any result. It is therefore necessary to 

 create an enlightened public opinion in favor of laws for 

 the conservation of fishes, and when this is done the en- 

 forcement of the laws will be both easy and effective. 



Our Society can aid in the development of this public 

 opinion both as a collection of well informed individuals 

 interested in this movement and as an organization. Our 

 members come from many of the states of the Union, 

 and among them are state and national officials, college 

 professors, commercial fishermen, scientists and sports- 

 men ; in brief, every aspect of the fishery question is rep- 

 resented among us. We are not sectional and we have 

 no selfish nor class interests to serve, and consequently 

 we are in better position to spread the knowledge of 

 fish life among the people than would be any trade organ- 

 ization or even a purely scientific society. As individuals 

 it would be well for us to write papers for the press ; not 

 merely for the big city papers, the sporting magazines 

 and the fish trade journals, but for the country weeklies 

 that go out among the masses of the rural population. 

 If we were to write articles that are scientifically accu- 

 rate; that are interestingly put, and above all, are not 

 "in a tongue not understanded of the people," many of 

 our members would be surprised to see how eagerly they 

 will be read and what an effect they will produce. One 

 of the main reasons that societies such as ours have so 

 little effect on public opinion is that the subjects that 

 we discuss and the language in which we discuss them 

 are uninteresting and unintelligible to most of the people 

 outside of our own narrow circle. It is hard for us, who 

 have given much of our time and effort to the acquire- 

 ment of a special line of knowledge, to appreciate that 

 what is merely elementary to us is an unknown and fas- 

 cinating world to many intelligent men outside of the 

 ranks of professional naturalists. How many of these 



