The Days of a Man [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, 1 its principal catch, a 

 shallow-water species, would permit that fish to slip 

 through netting mesh of the size we had prescribed. 2 

 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 3 involved in all Interstate Com- 

 missions 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 agreements 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- 



1 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 for 

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



1272 3 



