DECADENCE OF DEEP-SEA FISHERIES 289 



industry on our shores is very nearly comprehended in a 

 history of the industry as it has been carried on in New 

 England for that time. By the middle of the last century, 

 the oyster trade of the Middle Atlantic States had as- 

 sumed definite form throughout the Middle West. The 

 importance of the fisheries of the Great Lakes was being 

 discovered by the people of those sections, and its growth 

 was by leaps and bounds once the people realized its pos- 

 sibilities. The new settlers about San Francisco found 

 oysters in the sands of their bay; but these were inferior 

 to the eastern product. With Yankee enterprise, oysters 

 from the East were introduced into the waters of the 

 Pacific, that the markets might be supplied with home 

 grown products. The canned fish products and dried cod- 

 fish of New England found their way to the Pacific coast. 

 But they could hold no monopoly of the market there after 

 it was learned with what endless abundance the waters of 

 the northern Pacific supplied markets with salmon and 

 halibut. 



The building of railroads throughout the land at first 

 led to the extension of the New England fish trade over 

 wider sections of the land. For one or two decades the 

 effect was wholly to the advantage of the eastern fisheries. 

 With the growth and development of an important lake 

 fishery, and with an over-abundant supply of salmon every 

 year upon the Pacific coast, however, the time was sure to 

 come when the fishery products of the West invaded the 

 markets of the East, and competition was set up in the 

 very stronghold of the industry. This event marked the 

 beginning of the time when the deep-sea fisheries had to 

 contend not only for the control of the markets but even 

 for their existence. Improvements in the refrigerator car 

 service made it possible for the fresh fish of New England 

 to be delivered a thousand miles from Gloucester. But 

 the same service brought the fresh salmon of the Columbia 



