The Cordova daily times., 1920-10-19

(Edmund Ellsworth Sumner in Rail
 way and Marine News.)
 In its fisheries Alaska has de- yeloped one of it's greatest sources of wealth. According to careful compilation made by the late E. L. T. Harrison, formerly editor of the Alaska-Yukon magazine, with the of ficial records of the annual output during the last decade, the total value of the products of fisheries from the time of Seward purchase up to and including the present cal | endar year 1920. reaches sum well over half a billion dollars. Of this total. salmon. including the fresh, dried smoked, kippered and canned products, represents approximately so pk pkr cent, the remaining 20 per cent covering the halibut, cod. her ring, clans crabs, fresh water fish, whale, miscellaneous fish and fish products such as whalebone, tertil- izer and oil sfss52
 The great value of Alaskas fish ing products is emphasized at this time owing to it's important rela- tion to the general subject at hand. Reports from the North during the last few weeks were to the effect that the cannery men were very much disappointed over the poor run of salmon. and many of the canner- ias closed down early and sent their employees back to Seattle.
 Taking the official record of the |. s. department of commerce and we find that for the fiscal year ended June 3Oth, last. the total pro. duction of canned salmon in Alaska was 209 ,662.37S pounds. This showed decrease of 1OO.O00.OO0 pounds from the total of 1919 fiscal year. and 56O00,OO0 pounds under the total of 1918. The direct answer to this is that the salmon industry has not htSu SdHSlN SaiSSNN'tl QCN ol bIoPtilN regulated. especially during that dec ade when conservation ran wild.
 It will be recalled that canserva- tion in Alaska was exclusively ap- piled upon the wholly visionary theor- ies of Clifford Pinchot. Pinchot was possessed of an obsession in pro- tecting the forests and his battle cry was ever "Woodman spare that tree" He went so far as to in clude minerals but never once did his plan of conservation include the fish Briefly. his was a misdirected the picturesque forests of Alaska on the false assumption of their value as marketable producers, when in point of fact the Alaskan forests could never hope to compete in the lumber market with the products of the northwest or of the south. When tying up the forests. he also tied up the possible development of oil coal, copper and other mineral products within the forest reserves. There 4ever was a time that, the timber meant anything commercially valu- able except wood pulp. He gave no heed 10 animal life
 In passing, it is gratifying to note that the IT s forestry burpau aC- cording to an official statement of Chief Forester Greedy. has lately granted two permits for pulp mills at Juneau and at Port Snettisham and, let it here be emphasized very strongly that the amount of timber each is permitted to cut represents a total far in excess of the amount that would have been cut had a pulp mill been started in 1906 and had they taken up land for the purpose of securing it's timber under the old and established land laws that had so successfully been applied to con- tinenta United States.
 But let us return to our fish.
 It is not the intention to here give the intensely interesting history of the salmon. Every thinking man