12 THE MOLLUSK FISHERIES 



to be riparian owners or not, though every other citizen of this 

 Commonwealth who so desired would not be excluded from an 

 opportunity to secure a similar lease. The personnel of the 

 fisher class has vastly changed in the past decade. There are 

 to-day two distinct types : The permanent resident, usually na- 

 tive born, bound to a definite locality by ties of home and kin 

 and of long association, — a most useful type of citizen. Con- 

 trasted with this is the other, a more rapidly increasing class, — 

 foreign born, unnaturalized, nomadic, a humble soldier of for- 

 tune, a hanger-on in the outskirts of urban civilization, eking 

 out an existence by selling or eating the shellfish from the pub- 

 lic fishing grounds. Too ignorant to appreciate the impor- 

 tance of sanitary precaution, the alien clammer haunts the 

 proscribed territory polluted by sewage, and does much to keep 

 the dangerous typhoid germ in active circulation in the com- 

 munity. 



The public mollusk fisheries only foster such types of non- 

 producers, and prevent them from becoming desirable citizens. 

 The best class of fishermen and citizens has no advantage over 

 the worst, but is practically compelled to engage in the same 

 sort of petty buccaneering and wilfully destructive digging, in 

 order to prevent that portion and privilege of fishing which the 

 law says shall belong to every householder and freeman of the 

 Commonwealth from being appropriated by these humble free- 

 booters, who are at once the annoyance, the terror and the de- 

 spair of cottagers and shore dwellers. 



All these conditions would be almost completely corrected 

 by the lease of the flats to individuals, thus removing from the 

 fishermen stultifying competition and compelling these irre- 

 sponsible wandering aliens to acquire definite location. But 

 most particularly a system of leasing would permit each per- 

 son to profit according to his industry, perseverance, thrift and 

 foresight. 



The Grants. — As previously stated, the grants should be 

 made into two divisions: (1) including suitable areas between 

 the high and low water marks; (2) territory below mean low- 

 water mark. The privilege of planting and growing all shell- 

 fish should be given for both classes of grants. Class 1 

 would be primarily for the planting of clams, with additional 



