The salmon trap: an analogy for people's entrapment by the state.

• Author: Higgs, Robert
• Position: Etceteras... - Column

A salmon trap (also known as a pound net; figure 1) is a setup for catching salmon as they return to their spawning places in the gravel beds of shallow inland streams. Such traps were used in Washington and Oregon until they were outlawed by Oregon in 1926 and by Washington in 1934--and in Alaska until they were banned in 1959. They were highly efficient arrangements for harvesting salmon, outlawed only because sportsmen's groups and the operators of competing types of harvesting gear ultimately had more political clout than the trap operators (Higgs 1982).

The traps can be constructed in various ways, but a common type was a carefully shaped arrangement of netting or wire mesh secured to driven piles, usually placed not far from shore along an observed migration path of returning salmon. The "lead" was a straight fence of netting, often several hundred feet long, extending from the bottom of the body of water to the high-water level and running in a direction approximately perpendicular to the shoreline. After encountering the lead, the salmon swam along it toward the shore into the "outer heart," a V-shaped, semienclosed arrangement of netting. Proceeding through the outer heart toward the shore, they squeezed into the "inner heart," another V-shaped enclosure from which the only avenue of escape was the narrow passage through which they had entered. (Some traps had no inner heart.) From the inner heart, the determined salmon, whose instinctual reluctance to turn in their own wake made the traps so effective, proceeded through a narrowing tunnel into the "pot," a shallow holding area from which almost no fish could escape. To facilitate emptying the captured fish into a scow, some traps had a "spiller" adjacent to the pot and connected with it by another tunnel. A few traps, so-called double-enders, had hearts and pots at both ends of the lead (Higgs 1982).

I have often pondered the analogy of the salmon's being caught in such a trap and a human population's being caught in the institutional arrangement we call big government. Just as the salmon trap's lead intercepts the fish in the course of their normal life cycle and directs them into captivity, so various political devices and entreaties intercept people in the course of their normal lives and direct them toward dependence on the state. Salmon instinctively strive to return to their spawning places. Human beings strive to get wealth and security, and if they can get something...