I'he Days of a Man 1:1909 



proved it. The act was preceded, however, by a 

 preamble to the effect that "Whereas the fisheries in 

 the waters surrounding the state of Michigan are the 

 property of the State, we do resolve. ..." All 

 this was done at the instance of Mr. J. W. Orr of 

 Bay City and other members of fishery companies 

 operating on Saginaw Bay, a district in which the 

 small size of the lake herring,^ its principal catch, a 

 shallow-water species, would permit that fish to slip 

 through netting mesh of the size we had prescribed.^ 

 The states' right plea was urged by Senator William 

 Alden Smith on behalf of Michigan, and by Wesley 

 L. Jones, Senator from Washington. Replying, I said 

 Treaties that the principle^ involved in all Interstate Com- 

 national mjssions held in this case — namely, that conserva- 

 """^ tion of fisheries could not be secured by one state 



alone; and, furthermore, no individual state can make 

 a treaty — for any purpose whatsoever — with a 

 foreign country. Thus an agreement between Wash- 

 ington State and British Columbia, or between Ohio 

 and Ontario, could have no enforceable legality. The 

 right to make international agreem.ents on any sub- 

 ject must lie somewhere; under our governmental 

 form, it is vested in the President with the advice 

 and consent of the Senate. Going then into detail, 

 I explained that the fisheries of Lake Erie, for ex- 

 ample, could not be adequately protected so long as 

 New York, Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, and 

 Ontario had different statutes controlling them, with 

 everywhere more or less opposition to all conserva- 



^ Leucichthys harengus. 



2 To prove this fact to the Senate, Mr. Orr took a basket of the fishes 

 to Washington with a section of gill-net. 



3 The same principle, afterward embodied in the International Treaty tor 

 the Protection of Migratorj- Birds, has been upheld by the Supreme Court. 



C 272 3 



