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cerned in the Columbia River. Idaho and Montana are not seriously in- 

 terested in the salmon, but Washington and Oregon are both vitally in- 

 terested in the salmon fisheries of thai stream. But these two States 

 have never been able to agree upon concurrent legislation which adequately 

 protects the fisheries, and things have gone from bad to worse. Two years 

 ago an effort was made by certain people interested to restrict the taking 

 of salmon in the upper Columbia by cutting out the use of certain kinds 

 of apparatus. This matter was referred to the people in Oregon, and at 

 the same time those who were interested in the fisheries in the uppr Co- 

 lumbia had a similar question submitted to the people stopping fishing 

 in the lower river, and a very curious result followed. The people said it 

 would be a good thing to restrict fishing in both parts of the river, so both 

 amendments carried, and the inevitable result followed that neither is 

 enforced, illustrating very clearly the impossibility of two or more States 

 agreeing upon adequate measures in questions of that kiud. 



Then the question came up as to the control of the fisheries in inter- 

 national waters. The question thei'e has for many years been a serious 

 one, particularly on Lake Erie. That lake has abutting on it four States 

 (in this side of the line — Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania and New York — 

 and the province of Ontario on the other — five political units that are all 

 interested in the fisheries of Lake Erie, and no two having the same laws, 

 so that at one time it would be legal to fish at a certain distance from the 

 shore and with certain apparatus off that narrow portion of Pennsylvania 

 which fronts on Lake Erie, and just beyond that narrow strip in Ohio or 

 New York it would be illegal, and there was constant difficulty to keep 

 the fishermen of one State within the strip in which they had a right to 

 fish; and the regulations on our side were in every case entirely different 

 from those on the Canadian side, so that friction followed there. It was 

 impossible for the individual States to handle this question, and in that 

 way the question of federal control came up. 



In addition to these questions, and of more recent development per- 

 haps, has come the question of the desirability of federal control of inter- 

 state waters and other waters in the matter of public health. We have a 

 good illustration of the necessity for this in the Potomac River. Wash- 

 ington City has sometimes suffered from an epidemic of typhoid fever, 

 and investigation has shown again and again that the source of infection 

 was not in the District of Columbia, but was brought from some place 



