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You are all as familiar— perhaps many of you more so, than 

 I— with the organizations employed in prosecuting fish-cul- 

 tural work in this country, so that no detailed account of them 

 is necessary. Here is the United States Fish Commission 

 with men, with means, with appliances and with scientific 

 knowledge, and while doing the same kinds of work that 

 various State Commissions are doing, yet doing much more 

 than any single State organization. Here are the State 

 Commissions each prosecuting the particular kinds of work 

 required by local conditions under which in the different States 

 fish-culture is being carried on. At the points where these 

 different organizations have work common to each, why 

 may there not be cordial and effective co-operation? Not 

 merely the negative, of not interfering with each other, but 

 the positive working together to economize expenditures and 

 effort, and thus increase general and permanent results. 



Bordering the Great Lakes are six States having a popu- 

 lation of about fourteen millions of people. The fisheries of 

 these Great Lakes, as their product enters into the general 

 commerce of the country, cannot be regarded as the concern 

 of the six States— they are of national importance If the 

 fish captured in these lakes were consumed along their shores 

 I grant that the States would have no special claim upon the 

 general Government for taking part in maintaining such fish- 

 eries, or helping in any way to their re-establishment. This 

 was the condition of affairs once ; but with the modern facili- 

 ties of rapid communication and improved methods of trans- 

 portation, their product is marketed all over the country, and 

 for that reason the States bordering the Great Lakes have, in 

 my judgment, as good a right to assistance from the General 

 Government, in the directions I shall presently mention, as 

 the fisheries of the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Our lake 

 fisheries are not to be compared in extent and value to those 

 of the seas, but it is a difterence in degree not in kind. The 

 United States is doing a most necessary work in the investi- 

 gation and promotion of the Atlantic fisheries, is preparing 

 to investigate more thoroughly, and help develop the fisheries 

 of the Pacific ; it has done the country an invaluable service 



