The Ketchikan miner., 1915-06-17
FROM MONDAYS FISH |S KING 1T RED MEN'S HALL
 SATURDAY NIGHT

erally loved and respected by those with whom he has come in contact. A picture of Fred Patching the Fort. mann Hatchery superintendent fol- lowed, aud then others giving the hatchery business in it's entirety.
 From hatehing to catching and can ming the salmon, it was but step,
 with thc illustrations and ex- planation Mir. Heckman took his aud .cnee through 1t all. He showed first the different kinds of gear necessary for catching the salmon: gill nets where the, water is muddy and brack- ish; purse seines where the fish have
 'schooled up;' and traps where the
 .ater was clear, and the fish far from the spawning grounds were too scattered to fish with the seines.
 The mechanical methods In can ming were next shown on the screen, the speaker explaining that the fish was not touched by hands from the time it entered the "iron chink" until it was in the can ready for cooking, thus making it the cleanest and most sanitary food in the market
 today.
 The food value of canned salmon WAS the next point touched on, fig ures from government publications be- ing introduced to show that dollar for dollar canned salmon offered more and better values as food than any of the ordinary food commodities from beefsteak to beans.
 That the country at large appre- ciates this fact was shown by the phenominal increase in the consump- ton of canned salmon. According to MT. Heekman, the first salmon to be put into cans on the Pacific Coast, was packed in 1854, on the Sacramento Riser, California, when a bout 2,O0O cases was put up. This
 amount found such poor demand that no more was packed there for ten years. 49 years ago George W. Hume packed the first salmon on the Columbia river, and advertised his
 pack and got people to eating it by ls a basket on his arm and ped iiing the canned salmon on the
 streets of the towns of Oregon and Washington. That year but $500 cases were packed.
 Puget Sound packed it's first sal n 1877 ip go, the first Alaska salmon was put | into cans at a little cannery near I Sitka. In 1886, when MT. Hickman
 first came to Alaska, the total pack
 for the north was 142,065 cases, and
 two years later the pack of every
 eannery in the world aggregated but l l,217,792 cases. Since then the pro- l duction has increased so rapidly that
 in 1913 the total pack was S,O63,447 which explains why the price of sal
 mon has been so low, as the produc- l ton has increased faster than the
 consumption, and the product is thus
 thrown on the market at a figure which fails to give fair returns to
 those packing same.
 On this latter point MT. Heckman told of his experiences in the recent
 session of the legislature. How salmon
 had been made the "goat'' by the
 members from the other divisions,
 some of whom for campaign purposes had said that the salmon packers
 we're robbing the Territory of nine-
 teen millions of dollars every year
 md that they should be required t, pay all the taxes for the aintainance If the Territory. Being d salmon man MT. Hickman prepared schedule of costs and prices received tor the salmon pack in Alaska, which showed that with an investment of over twenty-five million dollars the canneries of the north had cleared an average of but s605,024.0 per year for the years to 1914 inclusive. which is a. | bout four per cent. on the capital in- vested. Does this look as though 't '@tN A''S "hJ pody Say we
 are not robbing the Territory of
 single dollar, and that. we have as
 much or more right to exist under the laws of the Territory of Alaska
 than the placer miners who are ship
 ping the gold out of the country and
 are not paying q dollar in taxes" he said.
 Mr. Hickman concluded by illus tratlng the foolishncss of such con
 tention, and complimcnted the Bureau Of Fisheries for the excelance of their work in transplanting shad and other food fish from the eastern coast to the Pacific, and "Humpies' from the Alaskan streams to tho Atlantic, He also called attention to the pos abilities from canning standpoint i of the Alaska herring which he stat