A HALF-CENTURY OF GROWTH 



171 



industry of the country may be said to have been embraced 

 in these two states. 



Turning now to the mackerel fishery we find that its 

 development was immediate and very rapid after the treaty 

 of 1818 went into operation. The catch of mackerel of the 

 country was unimportant previous to 1819. For fifteen 

 years preceding 1819, the total recorded catch of mackerel 

 by the fishermen of Maine was 6,553 barrels ; of Massachu- 

 setts, 231,085 barrels. The catch for Maine in the year 

 1819 was 5,322 barrels, and for Massachusetts, 100,111 bar- 

 rels. From 1819 there was an almost unbroken line of de- 

 velopment in the mackerel industry to the year of great- 

 est prosperity, 1831, when 450,000 barrels of mackerel were 

 salted in Maine, New Hampshire and Massachusetts. Of 

 this amount, the fishermen of Massachusetts laid claim to 

 383,549 barrels, valued at $1,589,936. The catch of mack- 

 erel for 1831 is all the more remarkable when it is remem- 

 bered that the fish were caught by hook and line, each 

 fish being pulled in individually, where to-day by the use 

 of the purse-seine several hundred barrels may be taken 

 at a single haul. 



For the decade following 1831 there was a sharp decline 

 in the fishery until the low water mark was reached in 1840, 

 when only 50,492 barrels were taken in Massachusetts. 



THE STATUS OF THE CODFISHERY OF THE COUNTRY IN 1859. 



