The Nonpartisan Leader Newspaper, February 4, 1918, Page 11

CATCHING SALMON ON THE PACIFIC COAST s v S, In recent years the pursé seine has gained ascendancy over the trap as an efficient fish killing appliance. This picture shows a purse selné laid out. It is shaped like a purse, as the name indicates, and is supported by the line of cerks shown on top of the water. ing outfits. Each outfit with the boat represents an investment of abou.;t $7000. ing devices has been increased enormously. The big fishing concerns devised “pound nets,” or fish traps, set permanently in the paths traversed by the schools of fish making for fresh water. These were capable of taking millions of fish during a season. Under the fishing laws any concern was entitled to select a trap location and to hold it, without use, for four years. Naturally the big fellows, on the inside of the fish trust, grabbed all the good locations, more than they needed, so as to freeze the little fellows out. But of recent years an even more efficient fish killing device, the purse - seine, was brought into use. The purse seine has the advantage.of being removable so that it can be brought directly in the path of the fish, in what- ever way they may go. Year after year larger catches of fish were made, and in 1913, the year of a “big run” of sockeye, the catch broke all records. .- It wasn’t because there were more fish, it was because the big fish concerns, in their greed, were getting a bigger proportion of the run. Less and less salmon found their way past the fish traps and purse seines and gill nets, to the headwaters of the fresh water rivers to spawn. The state fish- eries department extended its work and hatched more and more salmon, but not many sockeye, for - the reason that the sockeye nearly all go up the Fraser river, in British Columbia, to spawn. The fisheries department hatcheries, of course, are lo- cated on Washington soil, and thus have little op- portunity to catch the sockeye. This was in 1913. In that year Puget Sound fish packers canned 1,757,549 forty-eight-pound cases of sockeye salmon alone. That was four years ago. Last year the sockeye run was again due. With fish killing devices better than ever before the fishing concerns sent their men out to take sockeye. They were disappointed. - The run was less than 25 per cent of what it had beéen four years before. The Puget Sound sockeye pack was only 400,000 cases. GREED OF FISH TRUST THREATENS SUPPLY What had happened? The packers, unwilling to admit their own greed, gave a dozen different ex- planations. ed the Fraser river headwaters. The Panama canal had changed the ocean currents so that the sock- eye were unable to find their way back again. The war (they had to bring the war in somewhere) was responsible, they said, as the submarines had prob- ably scared the salmon away somewhere else. Not one of the packers was willing to give the real reason. But Ff§h Commissioner L. H. Darwin gives it in his biennial report, just issued. Darwin ~ says flatly that the sockeye have been “fished out”; that '‘so many were caught in 1513, in 1909 and pre- ceding years, that too few were left to find their way to their spawning grounds. In other words, .the greed of the packers is threatening to kill the goose that lays the golden egg—if the salmon can be compared with the goose without risking a charge of nature faking. G - Darwin is making a fight to save the sockeye. It : © is a Canadian fish by nativity. 'He is trying to naturalize the sockeye as a citizen of the United - Railroad work, they said, had block- ' States. He is taking thousands of sockeye each year in Sound waters now and towing them alive in crates 14 miles to the Samish hatchery, where they are held until “ripe” and the eggs then taken. The young sockeye then will be released in the Samish river in the belief that following salmon tradition, they will return four years hence to the fresh waters in which they were spawned—in this case on the American side of the line. But Darwin makes it plain that he can not accomplish this ob- ject unless some restrictions are placed on the sockeye fishing, =~ ; ; With less than a 25 per cent catch of sockeye this year, the fishing concerns were compelled to turn to inferior grades of salmon. These are of two - principal varieties—humpbacks, which when ,..canned have a light pink color, and dog salmon, or “chums,”- which have white flesh. Their meat is said to have as high a food value as the sockeye, but the public has been- educated to expect a red- fleshed salmon and consequently their price is lower. In the past the fishing concerns have avoided catching “humps” and “chums” when possi- ble, and when they have caught them have often thrown them away. Sometimes the Sound has been so littered with dead dog salmon that it has ‘con- stituted an actual menace to health. PACKERS CAN CHARGE WHAT THEY PLEASE This year, however, the -fishing concerns were glad to take the lower grades, to make up for the The legislature of the state of Washing- ton passed a law to conserve the fish of the Pacific ocean, by providing a fish department to protect spawning places and to artificially hatech salmon. The fish in the sea belong to the people. The constitution of ‘Washington says so. But that’s only a theory. The fish really belong to the Pacific Coast fish trust, which largely monopolizes the business of catching and packing and shipping them. The trust, unlike farmers, fixes its own fish prices. So the law to con- serve the fish, obtained by fish trust legislators, really is a law to help the fish trust. It is a good plan to conserve the fish, but it would be better if there was something in the law to protect the people, who are supposed to own the fish and who have to pay, at the present time, exorbitant prices for salmon. There is not even a pretensesthat fish prices are regulated by ‘‘supply and demand’’ on the Pacific coast. The - prices are frankly fixed, arbitrarily, by . the fish trust. Farmers would get rich ~quick, too, if they could fix their own price on wheat, for instance. ““be praiged? sockeye shortage. But even at that they were un- able to get enough. The total pack this year, in round numbers 2,000,000 cases, was approximately 1,000,000 cases short of the pack of 1913, and nearly all of it consisted of low grade fish. : Yet it is estimated by reliable experts that the packers sold their short, low-grade output this year for scmething like $16,000,000, or $2,000,000 mere than was brought by the high grade pack of 1913, the largest in the history of the industry. Control of the market has enabled the packers to charge what prices they please. There are half a dozen big packers more or less affiliated with Chicago meat packers. The Booth Fisheries com- pany, representing the Armour interests, is one. The Pacific-American fisheries was started origi- nally under the Cudahy’s. It got outside money in, however, went through a receivership, “freezing” out the small stockholders, and the present owner- ship is in doubt. Libby, McNeil & Libby operate boldly under their own name. The Alaska Packers association represents a ‘group of California millionaires attempting to control fruit, fish and meat packing together. These large concerns have been gradually gobbling up the smaller ones. “Ed” Sims, mentioned previously as the Republican boss of Washington in three successive legislatures, re- cently sold out to the Booth company for a figure said to be above $1,000,000. He still has a couple of canneries left, but is not as much interested in politics as he was previously. There is no open salmon market, like the grain exchange, and not even a pretense of fixing of Most of the canneries now have their own purse sein-—~| GRS ] RS prices by supply and demand. There exists a gen- tlemen’s agreement, however, among the big pack- ' ers that one of their number, generally the Pacific- American fisheries, shall fix the price at the be- ginning of the season. The price is supposed to <% represent the cost of production, plus a reasonable™ " profit, the packers determining the cost of pro- duction and also the reasonable profit. TRYING TO FREEZE OUT THE INDEPENDENT MEN This year, under this plan, the price of the low = grade dog salmon or “chums”, which was 50 to 60 cents in 1913, was marked up to $1.65 per dozen cans, the same price commanded by the sockeyes, the highest grade fish, four years ago. Sockeyes were marked up above $3. .- The fish all belong origindally to the state of Washington. The state, as was mentioned before, gets about one cent for each 43 pounds of fish. Many of the packers catch most of their own fish, others buy a large part of their supply. The fisher- men who sell to these' packers are largely Aus- trians, alien enemies under the new conditions of war, They have been securing a much better price than ever before. A dozen years ago dog salmon were hardly taken at all and when sold brought -only one or two cents apiece, while sockeye brought .as low as five cents apiece. bid 36 to 65 cents for a dog salmon and ag much ' -as 70 cents for a sockeye. i RS A Is this ‘generosity for which the packers are to Not altogether, according to those in g Now the fishermen- (Continued on page 21) .