Senator WALLGREN. And under the gambling point, it is a question whether a man should go up there in Alaska and take a chance on his pack, because the present tax laws take most of it away from him anyway.

Mr. DIMOND. Well, of course, we can't control that.

Senator WALLGREN. And the running of a fish-packing plant requires some money. You have to have quite an establishment. These men have been in there for years. They don't like the idea of having somebody come along and practically just oust them out of their interest.

Mr. DIMOND. Quite right. I appreciate that. And when a seiner is fishing in a certain area, he does not like to have some other seiner come in and edge up so close to him and get the salmon. But that is the spirit of competition.

Senator WALLGREN. Well, I don't know. Maybe I am wrong about this, but it looks to me as though your radio law and the grazing law are just about the same sort of a proposition. You can't all fish. Everybody can't fish.

Mr. DIMOND. I realize that.

Senator WALLGREN. They can't all go into the same waters.
Mr. DIMOND. I realize that a witness-

Senator WALLGREN. You wouldn't go out and fish if you thought everybody was fishing in the same area, and you would not take the gamble of going in and buying your cans and your gear and all that sort of thing if you thought everybody was going to go in there, because it is a gamble even though there is no unrestricted fishing. They have to go down to the bank and sign away everything they own before they can go up there and buy their cans and their gear and everything that is needed in order to try and produce a pack for that year. And even then they go broke. They have lost their money. These fishermen gamble. Of course, some of them know the game and make a little money; and even then they may have a bad run. Fish may not be running. And, as I say, under our present tax laws, the way we cut into a man's profits with our taxes, why, it is quite a gamble for any man to go up there in Alaska and take those chances. And the important thing is that with this war on we found out the value of the salmon pack.

Mr. DIMOND. Surely.

Senator WALLGREN. We found out what it means, and I think we ought all to feel that we ought to pack as much as we can every year. Mr. DIMOND. As you said before, consistent with conservation. Senator WALLGREN. That is right; conservation.

Mr. DIMOND. Surely; I agree a hundred precent with that, and I know that, although some people have made good profits, lots of other folks have gone broke.

Senator WALLGREN. That is right.

Mr. DIMOND. So it is a highly speculative business. But I don't know of any business, unless it is fortified by a monopoly or by a cartel, that is not speculative. Lots of people go broke in other businesses too.

Now, Mr. Chairman, I want to conclude my statement. I want to conclude my statement by saying to the committee, in all solemnity, that if you intend to leave in the other provisions of the bill, then you

should certainly strike out this provision which now appears on page 2 and which says:

It is further declared to be the policy of the United States that, subject to the provisions of this Act, no exclusive or several right of fishery shall be granted in any of the waters of Álaska, nor shall any citizen of the United States be denied the right to take, prepare, cure, or preserve fish or shellfish in any area of the waters of Alaska, not included in the coastal waters of the Annette Island Reserve, where fishing is permitted by the Director of the Fish and Wildlife Service of the Department of the Interior.

because that language, in view of the other provisions of the bill, means precisely nothing. If you pass this law you have thrown overboard forever-or until Congresss determines otherwise, whether that is 1 year or 10 or a hundred years-you throw overboard the provision that we have lived under up until this moment, that every citizen of the United States shall have the same equal right to participate in the fishing in the waters of Alaska.

Now, you see, this is language

Senator WALLGREN. This is existing law.

Mr. DIMOND. Oh, yes, except here you have it "subject to the provisions of this Act."

"Subject to the provisions of this Act." In other words, everybody is going to have a free and equal right to fish, except as otherwise provided in the act, and the act does otherwise set up a monopoly of fish traps; it creates a vested interest in fish traps.

Senator BILBO (chairman of the subcommittee). Any other question?

Mr. DIMOND. I thank you, sir.

Senator BILBO. Thank you, Mr. Dimond. We are glad to have your testimony on this bill.

Mr. DIMOND. May I read over and correct my testimony, Mr. Chairman?

Senator BILBO. The clerk will furnish you a copy; will you not? Mr. DIMOND. I do not intend to change it, but I should like to check it.

Senator BILBO. Senator Bailey, chairman of this committee, sent this bill to the Secretary of State and the Secretary of War and the Secretary of the Interior for their suggestions as to the merits of the bill prior to its passage. We have a letter from the Secretary of State, and I have an extra copy here for you, Senator Robertson, if you want to look at it, and I have already given you a copy.

Senator ROBERTSON. Yes, sir.

Senator BILBO. That is all the Secretary of State wishes to say about the bill. He has written another letter to that effect.

Now, we have heard from the Secretary of War through Colonel Goethals.

I wonder if there is anyone here from the Secretary of the Interior who wants to testify.

Senator WALLGREN. Do you know, Mr. Jackson?

Mr. CHARLES E. JACKSON. Dr. Gabrielson expects to come before the committee perhaps tomorrow.

Senator WALLGREN. Tomorrow morning.

Senator BILBO. Tomorrow morning?

Senator WALLGREN. With the report of the Department of the Interior on the bill.

94737-44-5

Senator BILBO. Yes. All right. Whom would you like to have next?

Senator WALLGREN. Mr. Arnold, would you care to testify at this point? Do you have something you would care to say to the committee.

STATEMENT OF W. C. ARNOLD, ATTORNEY, KETCHIKAN, ALASKA

Mr. ARNOLD. Senator Wallgren and Mr. Chairman, I am W. C. Arnold. Mr. Wallgren suggested-if I may be seated here. Senator BILBO. Yes, sir. Have a seat.

Mr. ARNOLD. I live in Alaska.

Senator BILBO. In what capacity do you come? As a citizen of Alaska?

Mr. ARNOLD. I am an attorney. I live in Ketchikan.
Senator BILBO. Attorney. All right.

Mr. ARNOLD. I was quite interested in Mr. Dimond's remarks, and I think that I understand his viewpoint very clearly. I have lived in Alaska for 15 years. During all of that time and for many, many years prior to that this controversy over the use of fishing gear has raged there. On the one hand, there are those who use fixed gear or traps; on the other, there are those who use mobile gear seines, gill nets, hook-and-line fishers. Just like the controversy in the Western States between the cattlemen and the sheepmen, it goes on and on forever. As in the Western States, there has been violence over it in Alaska. Men have been hurt, perhaps killed.

I think if you will search the records you will find there has not been a session of Congress since 1917 at which a bill has not been introduced in one House or the other for the abolition of fish traps or for the purpose of confirming fish traps or legalizing fish traps or giving them an advantage over the other type of gear. This battle is not confined to Alaska; it is carried down to Washington at the slightest pretext. Mr. Dimond is allied with that group in Alaska who have long advocated the policy of mobile gear, who do not believe in fish traps, who believe in their abolition. On that particular point I am not in agreement with him. I believe that fish traps are necessary and useful and that in order to maintain a stabilized industry their use is essential, particularly in certain districts of the Territory.

Now, getting back to the Territory for a minute, there are two thoughts among the people of Alaska, both of which Delegate Dimond has voiced here. One, as I say, is that group of fishermen who use mobile gear, and who are quite a large group, who advocate the abolition of fish traps. The other is a group who advocate Territorial control of the fisheries of Alaska as distinguished from Federal control. That has long been a political issue in the Territory. The legislature of the Territory has many times sought to prevail upon Congress to surrender the control of the fisheries to the Territory.

Delegate Dimond is stressing anew those two points. For instance, he speaks about this board of review or advisory board. He points out that the Secretary is not compelled to appoint residents of the Territory on this board, thereby voicing the view of those people in Alaska who think that only those who reside in the Territory should have a voice in it; that all those who live outside the Territory should be excluded.

The same on the subject of hearings. This bill makes it mandatory upon the Director to hold a hearing in Seattle, provides that he may hold hearings at Juneau or elsewhere in the Territory if he sees fit. I am quite sympathetic to the Delegate's views on that question. I think that hearings ought to be held in the Territory. I think that these people ought to have an equal right to participate in them along with those who reside outside the Territory. I agree with that. The fishermen cannot come from Kodiak and from Anchorage and from other districts to Seattle to participate in these hearings. It is not practical. It is a long and an expensive trip. It would be a very fine thing if hearings could be held throughout the coastal areas of Alaska, which are quite extensive, gentlemen, if you will look at a map; and before the advent of war it was the custom of the present Director of the Fish and Wildlife Service to do substantially that. With the commencing of hostilities, why, annual hearings were stopped there. Some of these fishing villages and fishing centers are in the zone or what was recently a zone of hostilities. Travel is restricted by the military and for other purposes, and the Director discontinued the hearing practice. I think he had no other choice.

I think whenever peace comes he ought to again revert to that practice. These people should have an opportunity to appear in their local communities to express their viewpoints.

However, I can sympathize to some extent with the viewpoint of the Director of the Fish and Wildlife Service on that question, too. These are mandatory provisions and they affect the legality of these regulations. For instance, if the law requires him to hold a hearing at Kodiak, which is a very remote place, and if by reason of storm or other conditions he was unable to get there at the published time or within the specified date, the legality of this entire regulations might be dependent upon it, and he might be challenged. That is the other viewpoint of this thing.

Incidentally, I just jotted down here a list of the writers of the letters the delegate submitted for the record. I have not seen the letters, but took down the names of the people who wrote them. I happen to be acquainted with every man who wrote a letter submitted for the record. I know people throughout that country, know all those men, and know all organizations and all groups. All of them in the past have been active in the movement to abolish fixed gear in the Territory of Alaska. They are all fishermen who use mobile gear, who fish with seines, gill nets, or hook and line.

They would all personally benefit by the abolition of fish traps, a lessening of competition. From their viewpoint a bill to abolish fish traps in the Territory is a bill to put their competitors out of business, and they are in favor of it. They feel that whatever will limit their competitors will forward their own interests. And I am not criticizing them for it. That is their viewpoint, and they are entitled to it.

Now, the third proposition the Delegate makes is one I never heard him advocate before, and that is one that the sea ought to be open to everybody. I admit I am a little confused as to what his principle is. I take it that he means actually every citizen of the United States ought to have the right to erect fish traps in the Territorial waters. There are something like 120 or 130 million people, and if even 1 percent of them elected to invoke that right the fisheries of Alaska would be depleted overnight.

Now, the Delegate, I think, understands that clearly. He is familiar with conditions out there. I am not in a position to intelligently discuss what he is advocating because I do not quite understand it. I do not think he believes this resource is inexhaustible. No resource, whether on sea or land, has ever proven inexhaustible, and that is particularly true of the salmon fisheries of Alaska.

There must be some measure of control. He says whenever you put any limitation upon the right to fish in Territorial waters you create a monopoly. Well, I do not think that you thereby create a monopoly, but at the same time I do not think that is the point at issue. The point is, How are you going to conserve those fisheries and at the same time permit the fullest utilization of such fisheries? This bill, if I understand it, puts all types of gear in practically the same category, except the set-up regarding traps is not quite equal to that accorded mobile gear. This bill provides that all gear, whether fish traps, seines, gill nets, or whatever the type may be, shall be licensed. And if that license constitutes a special privilege, as the Delegate contends, then the seiner who gets a license, the gill-netter who gets a license, has the same special privilege as the man who is licensed to operate a trap.

If it is true that this bill does confer upon the Fish and Wildlife Service the right to limit by number and category the type of apparatus that shall be used in the various fishing areas in Alaska at any given time.

Now, if it is a monopoly, or if it is a special privilege, it is because of that limiting factor.

Senator WALLGREN. About that point, there is at the present time invested in Alaska a great deal of money in equipment, canneries, fishing installations, and so forth, I take it. Approximately how much money would you say that amounts to?

Mr. ARNOLD. I would say in the neighborhood of $60,000,000 invested within the Territory of Alaska, and another $20,000,000 in floating equipment outside of Alaska, which is a part of the operation. I mean by that, terminal facilities in Bellingham, Portland, San Francisco, and free-lance equipment, offshore vessels operating in that trade.

Senator WALLGREN. Is not that total investment more or less threatened by lax supervision of fisheries up there?

Mr. ARNOLD. The entire investment is based upon one theory and that only, that there will be an annual crop of fish to be harvested there.

Senator WALLGREN. Is it not almost necessary to give someone the right, that is, legitimate fishermen, to continue, in order to guarantee that he may be able to maintain his plant in operation, whether a canner or whatever line he may be engaged in?

Mr. ARNOLD. Senator, I do not know that you confine it to the canner. Let us start off with the fishermen. There are two ways of approaching it, and one is for the Director of Fish and Wildlife Service to limit and control the intensity of fishing in a given district, in order to perpetuate the run, to perpetuate the crop. The other system is that which the Delegate seems to advocate, that you throw it open and let everybody go in and get them, and have a lot of fun while it lasts.