10 REPORT OF COMMISSIONERS OF INLAND FISHERIES. 



wholesale dealers, as well as of your Commission and their deputies. 

 The passage of the law was strenuously opposed by the alien lobster- 

 men, w^ho were ably represented at the hearings by delegates and 

 attorneys. 



In view of a wide-spread and persistent misconstruction of the 

 motives of your Commission in recommending the passage of this 

 law, it may be stated with propriety that the clause limiting the 

 privileges of the lobster fishery was recommended, not as a blow aimed 

 at a particular nationality of foreigners, but as a bona fide attempt to 

 secure for the citizens of the State the benefits of a free fishery main- 

 tained and developed at the expense of the State. Also in regard to 

 the second section of the law, which provides that your Commission 

 may grant licenses, subject to the regulation of the act, to whom they 

 may think proper: the apparently plausible objection to the law has 

 been raised ostensibly on the ground that the Commissioners are given 

 too much discretionary power. That this hypothetical bugbear of the 

 possibility of arbitrary and unfair discrimination would be raised for 

 various purposes was, of course, foreseen, but the clause was recom- 

 mended solely to give practical and effective means of enforcing the 

 law for the better protection of the lobster fisheries. Everyone 

 familiar with the subject knows that the laws regulating the free 

 fisheries are in any case exceptionally difficult to enforce, and every 

 practical means should be used to make enforcement possible. 



PHYSICIAL AND BIOLOGICAL CONDITIONS OF THE BAY. 



All the fisheries industries depend upon the animal and vegetable 

 contents of the water and upon the physical conditions, such as 

 temperature and density of the water and the character of the bottom 

 and shores. Your Commission has for several years conducted 

 investigations in regard to these conditions in the bay, and is con- 

 vinced that further work in this direction is justified as the only sound 

 basis for control of the fisheries resources. The conditions of food 

 production upon land and in the water are characteristically opposite 



