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Show Alaska Salmon Puts Gold in Second Place Nobody except the Alaskan, perhaps, per-haps, considers the salmon a goldfish. To him the flash of its dripping flanks as it leaps in the sun is a more significant sig-nificant glitter than that of genuine gold. Salmon runs, in Alaska are of greater value than gold mines. It was gold that made modern Alaska, Alas-ka, beginning with the famous Klondike Klon-dike rush of 1896. Millions of dollars' worth of the yellow metal was mined. The peak year was 1916, when mineral min-eral production tWaled $4S,000,000. Ten years later salmon exports for 1926 were valued at $49,000,000, while mineral production had dropped to $17,658,000. , The golden harvest now is gathered not from the earth but from the waters of the earth. Salmon production Is not always so phenomenal. phenome-nal. A normal year, as In 1927, is only $27,000,000. Even so, the salmon is a more valuable asset to Alaska than the gold mine. Not so beautiful as the goldfish, perhaps, but more nearly deserving of the title. As for beauty, what fish can surpass the magnificent spectacle of a salmon leaping the merciless surge of a waterfall? wa-terfall? Dayton News., |