The Watchman And Southron

Destruction of Salmon.

The salmon fishery on the Pacific coast, which, at one time, was a source of large profit and a vocation which afforded employment to a large number of persons, is threatened with partial destruction. The salmon is one of the noblest of fishes, and a country whose waters abound in them is highly favored: but the insatiable American greed which has destroyed millions of acres of noble timber and almost annihilated the once mighty herds of game on the Western plains, has subjected the Pacific coast fisheries to the same ruinous process. Ten years ago the pack of canned salmon was 43,000 cases: last year it was 951,000 cases, worth $5,000,000. This year the catch is very short, not more than one-half that of last year, and the canners are growing serious at the sudden decline in a business which they have pursued with such destructive avidity. In spite of the State laws passed to preserve the fish during the spawning season, the Sacramento and Columbia Rivers are dragged so incessantly night and day that the fish have the greatest difficulty in reaching their spawning grounds. In places where once boat loads were the fruit of a day's work, only a dozen fish now reward the labor of a fisherman, and the exhaustion of the California and Oregon fisheries is seen to be an inevitable event if thorough and vigorous measures be not taken to avert it. The salmon have been driven northward, and Frazer River in British America and the waters of Alaska now abound in the fish that once entered the Columbia and Sacramento. A few years of assiduous and judicious cultivation would suffice to restore the fisheries to their former condition: but it is difficult to enforce this cultivation against the rapacious demands of the canneries. St. Louis Republican.