PLANTING AND FISHING. 



99 



forty-two vessels were engaged in the fisheries from Massa- 

 chusetts, of which three hundred and twenty-six belonged in 

 Essex County, distributed as follows: Marblehead, one 

 hundred and forty ; Cape Ann, seventy-five ; Salem, thirty- 

 four ; Beverly, thirty ; Manchester, twenty-five ; Ipswich, 

 twelve ; and Newbury, ten ; employing over twenty-five hun- 

 dred men, in seventeen thousand tons of shipping, actually 

 engaged in fishing, whose products amounted to one hundred 

 and fifty thousand pounds in value. The Revolutionary war 

 and other causes reduced this fleet from three hundred and 

 twenty-six sail to one hundred and eighty-eight in 1790. 



The fisheries suffered severely, in the latter part of the last 

 century and the first of this, by wars and disasters, the fish- 

 ermen becoming extremely poor, while, judging from the 

 prices paid in Lynn in 1817, I should think the "planters " 

 might have been in pretty good condition. As the source of 

 information gives a short item comparing the prices of 1817 

 with 1829, I will give it you entire as I copied it from 

 " Gloucester Telegraph " of 1829, as follows : — 



" ' The Lynn Mirror ' shows that the price of living is re- 

 duced less than one-half since 1817, while labor is as high as 

 it was ten years ago." 



1829. 



Flour per barrel 

 Flour per fourteen pounds 

 Meal per bushel 

 Molasses per gallon . 

 Tea, Y. Hyson per poimd 

 Coffee .... 

 Sugar .... 

 Candles .... 



In 1819 the United States, finding the fishing industry 

 impoverished and declining, passed a bounty act, which 

 should have been styled indemnity act, giving to each vessel 

 under thirty tons three dollars and a half per ton, for three 

 and a half months' actual employment cod-fishing. Vessels 

 over thirty tons, carrying not less than ten men, received 

 four dollars per ton, provided it did not exceed three hun- 

 dred and sixty dollars for any one vessel ; three-eighths 



