The Unfair Bounty of the Hood Canal
Local fishers lament that millions of salmon are being shipped away for canning, leaving the local community to profit nothing from their own waters.
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Every time the fishing steamer Chinook, chartered by the Meyers Packing Company, leaves Hood Canal she does so loaded; three, four and five and even six thousand salmon being sent down at a load. The local fishermen say there are millions of those fish in the canal and that the run shows no signs of diminishing. That so many fish should be sent away and the canal country reap little or no benefit from it seems unfair. If it pays a cannery to have a steamer under charter continually carrying fish, which in going so far become to some extent spoiled, how much more it would pay to establish a cannery and packing house here, where they can get their fish fresh, as many as they require. If some one does not open up such a business before the season is over we will be much surprised. We want a fish packing house established here without delay.
“That so many fish should be sent away and the canal country reap little or no benefit from it seems unfair.”
This argument over the extraction of regional resources by outside packing companies echoes long-standing tensions in the Pacific Northwest regarding corporate ownership of natural resources and local economic sovereignty.
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