Of course, the more conservative competitors resented this invasion from “the other side of the tracks.” Captain George S. Anderson was also opposed to a string of “shanty towns.” The matter was given a public hearing by _Forest and Stream_ in its issue of February 5, 1898, entitled “Nuisances in Yellowstone Park.” Mr. Wylie, known in Yellowstone as “the Professor,” wrote a vigorous rebuttal for the following issue. Other publications entered into the controversy, as did many of Wylie’s most satisfied customers. The question involved was whether the American people, in the enjoyment of their own pleasure ground, should be limited to one set of accommodations, which only the wealthy could afford.[241] The verdict of the public, from which there is no appeal, was definitely with “the Professor.” The business flourished and won an acceptable position in the more complete system that evolved. In the meantime an actual nuisance was committed by several hotel operators. They attempted to assemble and maintain wild life menageries. The government necessarily allowed stables and pastures for horses and cows, but that was all. Nevertheless, several managers also tried to raise pigs, although extreme precautions were essential to save them from bears. Colonel E. C. Waters had a “veritable stockade-pen of heavy logs bolted all around.”[242] Perhaps the most flagrant offender in this respect was the Yellowstone Boat Company. As an inducement to take a boat ride, this firm confined buffalo, elk, and bighorn in corrals on Dot Island. This untoward act, together with the prices charged for boat rides, brought many complaints, and upon official request the animals were promptly released.[243] Mosquitoes were an ever-present nuisance, sometimes assuming the proportion of a plague. Accustomed to the pursuit of fleet four-footed prey, they assailed slow-moving _Homo sapiens_ with particular gusto. Gleeful appreciation seemed discernible in their song. By day and night, unless the wind was blowing, the tourists were kept busy swatting those vexatious, glory-minded, musical-winged, bold denizens of the forest. Perhaps the most persistent annoyance, next to mosquitoes, was the prevalence of dust. One traveler laconically observed that he rode “from geyser to canyon, to waterfall, in a chaos of dust, until he returned on the fifth day a wiser and dustier man.”[244] But an elderly man, probably afflicted with asthma, entered the Fountain Hotel, singled out the manager, and shaking his finger in his face, dramatically shouted, “A man who would permit women and children to enter the Park, with the roads in their present condition, is an old scoundrel!”[245] How did cyclists ever manage to get around? Incredible though it appears they went through right along after 1882. To be sure, their voices were added to the chorus calling for better roads. These protests resulted in the adoption of a sprinkling system that will be described subsequently.