ECONOMICS OF THE FISHERIES 421 



quantity and value of fish produced are determined solely by the economic 

 factor of demand. 



The interaction of cost of production of a highly perishable product for 

 a limited and inelastic market attended by extremely sensitive prices ap- 

 pears to constitute an automatic self-regulatory mechanism by which the 

 total quantity of product is adjusted to supply the existing total demand 

 by mutual accommodation of surpluses and deficiencies, or abundances and 

 scarcities, between, among, and within the various regions, locaHties, and 

 specific fisheries of the country; by the immediate reaction of prices to 

 change in supply, the mechanism regulates the total and apportions the 

 productive effort among the fishermen who engage in whatever fisheries 

 appear to be most profitable in terms of quantity and price from place to 

 place and time to time, or enter or quit the fisheries, as appears to their 

 best interest. In this way the fishing effort of the whole country is modulated 

 in amount and distributed over all the opportunities in all localities and 

 regions. 



Suggestive indications are found in the statistical record that there may 

 also be natural and automatic biological accommodations among the species 

 of fish in the water; that the competitions, rivalries, and depredations among 

 species are such that, as the populations of some species decrease, those of 

 other species increase up to the limit of their basic food supply, in accord 

 with some aquatic equivalent of the Malthus law of human populations. 

 Gross historical changes in the composition of some of the product of the 

 older fisheries (such as those of New England) are consistent with such a 

 theory. 



In following the pulse of prosperity and depression, the fisheries product, 

 or at least the dominant part of it, pursues an opportunist course in the 

 market. When competing meat and eggs are high priced, the quickly re- 

 sponsive fisheries produce enough more fish to meet the increased demand 

 with some but not great increase of fish prices; when competing products 

 are cheap, the fisheries quickly retrench operations so as to reduce produc- 

 tion but not seriously reduce prices. Hence, in both quantity and total 

 value, but only to a limited extent in prices, the fisheries follow the typical 

 course of the business cycle; in a depression, fewer fishermen work, and 

 those engaged catch fewer fish and sell them at slightly lower prices and 

 less total money; on the return of better demand the entire series of adjust- 

 ments is automatically reversed. 



From a recapitulation of the regional statistical history of the country 

 there are chosen two regions. New England and the Great Lakes, as ex- 

 amples of the operation of interregional economic determinants. In the 

 New England region, the codfish in 1887 accounted for 71 per cent of the 

 ground or bottom fish and 82 per cent of this was salted; cod, haddock, 



