T^he Days of a Man Dgio 



Present in Lake Erie are still steadily on the decline; the 

 state oj magnificent red salmon (or sock-eye) fisheries of 

 "7 Puget Sound have rapidly fallen oft" to the degree of 

 being commercially unprofitable, and can only be 

 restored by the most drastic prohibition for two 

 generations, that is, eight years. It should, however, 

 be said that overfishing is not the sole, although the 

 main, cause of the decline. The building of dams by 

 power companies about Lake Quensel and elsewhere 

 in British Columbia has in the meantime narrowed 

 the available spawning grounds, and the calamity in 

 Yale Canyon, already described,^ put an end to the 

 big (fourth-year) runs. 

 A valid In the states' rights argument, I recognize one 



objection valid element*, protection administered by the 

 national government would apparently involve a 

 patrol of all boundary waters by an array of United 

 States marshals — a scheme repugnant to our public 

 and doubtless so to many of the Senators. The only 

 alternative would have been a patient eftort to 

 induce one state after another to adopt for itself the 

 regulations we deemed necessary — a process slow 

 but not hopelessly difficult outside the state of Wash- 

 ington. A recent case offering some parallel features 

 is found in state enforcement of the Eighteenth 

 Amendment. 



Furthermore, with the Senate in mind, we would 

 have reduced the number of regulations by omitting 

 all which "go without saying," or which might be 

 left to local decision, the protection of trout and 

 black bass for example, — eliminating also most of 

 the requirements as to mesh, and simply forbidding 

 the sale of young fish below a certain specified size 



1 Chapter xxx, page 136. 



c 276 :i 



