50 



was sold last year, and to serve also for general work by 

 " Fisheries." These were sent to Government and 

 thence to the Indian Marine Department where the 

 matter at present rests ; the want of a good vessel is 

 much felt. 



Mr. Hornell made a very important visit to Calcutta, 

 Dacca, etc., to enquire into the conditions and methods 

 of the chank trade and industry ; he has embodied the 

 results in a trade report on which action has been based, 

 while a second, dealing- with the shell-cutting industry, 

 has been prepared. 



Co-operation. 



26. During the lengthy tour of my Assistant, 

 Mr. Govindan, up and down the West Coast he paid 

 attention, inter alia, to the important question of 

 co-operation among the fishermen and curers. He 

 found the germs of such co-operation in an existing 

 society in Mangalore started in 1907 and working on 

 rules more or less of their own but apparently on true 

 co-operative lines, while in other places he found a 

 ready acquiescence in the idea on which he frequently 

 spoke and lectured ; at Tanur, where, as I mentioned in 

 my very first report (1906), the fishermen and curers are 

 a series of independent and isolated units, — but, for that 

 very reason, subject to heavy usury on their necessary 

 loans — there appears to be an excellent field for co- 

 operative work ; this will be specially attended to next 

 season as there will be a branch station at Tanur. 



The Mangalore society resulted in 1907 from the 

 perusal by a District Press clerk of the rules, etc., for 

 co-operative societies published in the District Gazette ; 

 at present the society is not registered, and worked 

 solely on the monthly subscriptions, etc., of its 51 mem- 

 bers ; the loans, however, are granted by the committee — 

 not by auction as in the nidhis — and the committee 

 members are reported to satisfy themselves of the neces- 

 sity for each loan, e.g., by examining the fishing boat to 

 be repaired, etc., before granting it. So far the society 

 is working satisfactorily. Another interesting society is 

 an indigenous temperance society ; the besetting vice of 

 the fishing classes is drink, partly by reason of their 

 onerous and exposed calling, partly because they have 

 hitherto had no opportunities for thrift or for the 



