THE ALASKA FISHERMAN
Published the l&th of each month at Ketchikan, Alaska
WILLIAM L. PAUL, ATTORNEY FOR THE
Alaska Native Brotherhood
Entered as second-class matter at the Post Office at
KETCHIKAN, ALASKA
SUBSCRIPTION PRICE $2.00 TOR TWELVE ISSUES
An Act
Be it enacted by the Senate and House oT
Representatives of the United States of America
in Congress assembled, That all non-citizen In
dians born within the territorial limits of the
United States be. and they are hereby, declared
to be citizens of the United States; Provided.
That the granting of such citizenship shall not
in any manner impair or otherwise affect the
right of any Indian to tribal or other property.
—Approved by the President of the United
States, June 2, 1924.
An act (of Feb. 8, 1887) relating to “every
Indian born within the Territorial limits of the
United States” embraces Indians of Alaska- -
Nagle vs. United States, 191 Fed. 111.
Furuseth and the Packers
Ii citizens could really hear the secret agree
ments made by the fish eanners, they would
learn a great deal to prove what we have always
said; that theie is such a thing as a fish trust,
that they are engaged in manipulating officials
in high position, that they make secret agree
ments to control prices paid fishermen and prices
at which they sell their goods.
Once in awhile, these fish barons make the
mistake of proposing their unlawful purposes to
someone who is not one with them. Andrew
Furuseth, in his testimony before the Committee
on Merchant Marine and Fisheries, last January,
said in part:
“But what you want to do, as I understand it,
and what everybody \yints to do, the cannery
men, the fishermen, the people in Alaska, and
this committee, and everybody who appears be
fore it, absolutely unanimous, is to conserve fish.
But 1 want to call your attention to one thing,
that this is the first time 1 have ever had occa
sion to listen to a serious argument from the
cannerymen in favor of conserving the fish, and
I come to the conclusion it had something to do
with what somebody tried to do with me out in
California about two years ago. They came to
me and said “Now, look here, Furuseth; you are
president of the International Seamen’s Union
and you have something to do with this fishing
business and I want to talk with you about it.”
I said “Yes, I will be glad to.” lie said, “Well,
we have a lot of purse seiners coming up there
and they are rapidly destroying everything. Now,
we want to find some way of getting rid of
those purse seiners.” I said “How can you do
that?” “Well,” they said, “we can get Mr.
Hoover to fix that through reservations, and
through such regulations as to make purse
seines impossible up there; they cannot sell their
fish; they cannot take them to certain places,
even if they do catch them out in the open
waters. I said “Hold on; how are you going
to be able to do that under the present law?”
“Oh, well, we think we can find a way to do it.”
Now I said “No, thank you; 1 won’t have any
thing to do with that.
“That is two years ago. They got the secre
tary of the Alaska fishermen in amongst them
and they simply threw a smoke screen between
the facts and his poor eyes, and he sat there
and never said a word.” (Laughter).
The question which every informed person
must naturally ask is this, Was Hoover fixed by
the packers as charged? Just about the time
to which Mr. Furuseth referred, the Fish Barons
got Mr. Hoover to establish “fish reserves,” af
ter the Secretary of Agriculture had refused to
establish a “bird reserve” at the behest of the
same gentlemen. In this “fish reserve to con
serve fish,” Hoover did exactly what Mr. Furu
seth has testified to. Hoover limited (?) the
pack by establishing a figure two and three
times larger than the cannerymen had packed
in many years past, even before the time when
the Bureau of Fisheries admit there was any
danger of depletion. Then Mr. Hoover placed
the control of the gear in the hands of these
same cannerymen exactly as outlined by Mr.
Furuseth. The limitation of gear about which
Mr. Hoover speaks is only apparent, for the de
crease in traps was merely the elimination oi‘
' dummy traps,” a devise used by packers to
keep other trapmen from placing another trap
nearby, thus cutting down the catch of the real
trap. By eliminating this dummy trap device,
Mr. Hoover again played into the hands of the
trapmen and saved the fish trust hundreds of
thousands of dollars.
We Alaskans are making the appeal to the
citizens of the United States to give us a hear
ing. Forget that Mr. Hoover helped to pass
along food during the war, and consider the
facts which are being handed out in this consid
eration of the fisheries problem.
Mr. Hoover has done and is still doing every
thing required of him by the fish trust. There
is nothing that he has omitted doing. Henry
O'Malley, the present fish commissioner, was the
special selection of the fish packers to that high
office; Dr. Charles 11. Gilbert, of Leland Stan
ford University, their special investigator, knows
exactly what facts to suppress and pass over
lightly and quickly; E. M. Ball, the field agent
of the Bureau of Fisheries in Alaska, is the
man who allowed the Booth Fisheries to con
struct an illegal trap last year at Staney’s
Creek where they caught unlawfully over $30,
000.00 worth of salmon and finally paid a fine
of $400, but kept the fish so caught.
These men in high public office are branded
with the sign of the Fish Trust. Will the people
of the United States remain indifferent to the
facts ?