32 TWENTY-EIGHTH ANNUAL MEETING 



These, through the insistence of the commercial fishermen, 

 have been repealed, and today I say, without fear of contradic- 

 tion, that the fish are practically without protection on the 

 Great Lakes. Each state claims that the other does not pro- 

 tect according to its notions; and that there are differences 

 that ought to be reconciled, but up to the present time there 

 has been no reconciliation of differences. I do not entirely 

 agree with this view of the matter. I believe on the same 

 theory a state might complain that it could not fix the legal 

 rate of interest at five per cent because a neighboring state 

 fixed it at three, and that therefore, there should be no legal 

 rate of interest established. It is the state's first duty to pro- 

 tect itself, and that is what the state should be expected to do. 

 There are two great movements of fish in the lakes; to the 

 deep water for feeding, to the shoal water for spawning. 

 Those movements are as well known and as well recognized, 

 and always have been by the fishermen as by the fish them- 

 selves. The mesh of gill nets in 1840 on the lakes, and to about 

 1860, was five and a fraction inches, to six inches, differing 

 in different localities. The meshes of other nets were cor- 

 respondingly large. They did not need to be smaller because 

 the fish were large enough. There was then no market except 

 for such fish as were caught in the fall of the year. But the 

 country grew, and today we have in the six states bordering 

 upon the Great Lakes one-fifth of the population of this coun- 

 try, saying nothing about the great population that we fur- 

 nish with fish beyond this territory. Then freezers were built, 

 and it was possible to take the glut of a season and preserve 

 it for the market for an entire year to be marketed in addition 

 to what was taken in the season following. The fish are fished 

 for during the summer months, and they are fished for during 

 the fall. As the fish began to decline in size the nets gradu- 

 ally began to contract until they were finally Veduced to the 

 present size. A very good illustration can be cited of the 

 value of good laws in protecting the fisheries, on our boundary 

 waters. The National boundary of the great lakes extends 

 through Lakes Huron, Erie, Ontario and Superior. Lake 

 Michigan, lying wholly within the jurisdiction of the State of 

 Michigan, is today, with the exception of trout, practically 

 barren of its best commercial fish. The white fish industry has 

 come to be of little importance on that lake. But on those 

 waters on the international boundary the Canadian Govern- 

 ment has for years established a closed season for fish in the 

 month of November, which it recognizes to be the spawning 

 month. It has regulations that provide that trap nets shall not 

 be set beyond a certain number of cribs in a string and provides 

 that there shall be certain gaps between strings of nets. It 



