100 Thirty-Third Annual Meeting 
Possibly the carp is fit for food. Personally I do not like his 
looks as a fish and I do not like the looks of the people I have 
seen buying him in the market. I believe he is a cheap food 
for a cheap people, and that we ought to teach those people to 
live on a good American diet, so that they may become better 
citizens. I do not think we can make good people out of cheap 
food. (Laughter.) 
Now this little matter of commissions is something we have 
had experience with over in New York state. We have had com- 
missions of five, six and seven, and now have a commission of 
one. It is my judgment that the single headed commission is 
the best commission, and I will tell you why. The commissioner 
is a business man and he does not know anything about the scien- 
tific aspect of fish culture. He treats the whole hatchery system, 
forestry system and game protection system exactly as he treats 
his own business; he expects to get results from each one of 
those departments, and if he does not he calls up the gentleman 
in charge of the delinquent department and wants to know why. 
In one case he called up a gentleman in charge of a hatchery, 
who did not seem to be holding up his end, and there is a better 
man in that place now. (Applause. ) 
The wonderful success of our United States Commissioner of 
Fisheries is largely due to the fact that he is an organizer. He 
gets a first class lot of men for important places and therefore 
gets first class results—and that is what the people want—too. 
Put a scientific man at the head of a business enterprise and as a 
rule science does not bear out its reputation. It is all right for 
looking into the problems of life, but for getting the cash to work 
out those problems, it is not worth a cent. Let a scientific man 
go before a legislative committee and tell them in a general way 
what they ought to do, and the committee will say, “Look here, 
you want so much money, what are you going to get out of your 
work for it that we can tell the tax payers about?” And the 
scientist is not usually ready with the answer. So it seems to 
me that when you get down to a business enterprise—and that 
is what fish culture is, if it is anything; it is the running of a 
manufacturing plant to produce food for the people—you get 
the best results from having a trained, active, alert business man 
as your commissioner, and he will look out that his associates 


