292 NEW ENGLAND FISHERIES 



One of the demands is a bountiful supply of fresh fish. 

 The long offshore voyages have been abandoned and a 

 new home-market business has sprung up, important enough 

 to maintain a large percentage of the coast people engaged 

 in inshore fisheries. 



In place of numerous towns engaged in sending fleets 

 of vessels to the banks forty years ago, we find deserted 

 wharves, buildings in ruins, and fish-stands already past 

 repair. Only one town in Maine now employs vessels in 

 the bank fishery. The business has gradually centered 

 about Boston and Gloucester. The decadence of the New 

 England deep-sea fisheries is to be regretted. A possible 

 remedy will be the increase of those industries that are 

 immediately dependent on the products of the deep-sea 

 for their existence. That is, instead of the industry de- 

 pending upon its existence through the first value of the 

 products, as in the past, it may have to be maintained 

 through the profits that arise from the enhanced values 

 these raw products receive at the hands of the manufac- 

 turers of fancy brands of cod, mackerel, hake, and other 

 deep-sea fish. 



The subject of the decadence of our deep-sea fisheries 

 should not be dismissed without a consideration of the 

 status of the New England fisheries as a whole, both in 

 their relation to their former prosperous state and to the 

 fisheries of the country at large. A comparative view of 

 the New England fisheries for the years 1880 and 1905 

 shows that there is little difference to be found in the 

 number of men employed in the fisheries and the amount 

 of capital invested. In 1880 there were 37,043 men em- 

 ployed and in 1905 the number was 37,339. The total 

 value of the fisheries for the first-named year was 

 $11,753,062, and for 1905 the value was $14,184,205. The 

 average value to each man employed in 1880 was $312, 

 in 1905 the average was $379, an increase of twenty-two 



