1912] on The North Sm and its Fisheries. 425 



less coiiiick'iitly atiirin. Let me suy this in u word, that there is no 

 one answer to the (jnestion, bnt that we must separately set and answer 

 it for each species of fish, and even for this or that particuhir ground. 

 More than a hundred years ago, when our fisheries were trivial, the 

 haddock deserted our coasts, and became, for the time being, a rare 

 fish. Again, in 1866, long before steam-trawling began, Huxley's 

 Commission reported that the haddock was the only fish of which it 

 might perhaps be said or shown that its numbers had suffered 

 (liiiiinution. In (h'eat Britain alone, we take 100,000 tons of 

 haddo(;k a year from the North Sea, and, in spite of fluctuations, I 

 cannot find that its numbers perceptibly or significantly diminish. 

 The cod shows no signs of recent diminution, and has even been 

 increasing in the north. It is otherwise with the plaice, whose 

 diminution was already made clear to the Committee of 181)^-5. All 

 authorities are agreed that this fish shows serious diminution ; and 

 only next month our International Council meets at Copenhagen to 

 take in hand, after long investigation, this important and burning 

 question. The plaice is of small comparative importance to us in 

 Scotland, for, as I have already shown you, our plaice are few ; but 

 even in Scotland our statistics tell us that the diminution of this 

 fish, and especially of the large plaice, has been great and rapid. 



Many important questions I have had to leave untouched in this 

 hurried sketch, but on one of these I must yet say a word, I mean 

 the case of the small fisherman. We have seen in many ways that the 

 industry as a whole tends towards concentration, to the use of larger 

 boats, to the need of greater harbours : tends, in the case of line and 

 trawl fishing, to gravitate towards the great centres of population 

 and the great highways of traffic. And we have seen that an over- 

 whelming proportion of the gain goes to those who work the fisheries 

 on this larger scale, and that from their labours comes an overwhelming 

 proportion of the supply. But there are still some 6000 small fishing- 

 boats in England and 8000 in Scotland, and (though it is impossible 

 to obtain exact figures) I think that about one-seventh or one-eighth 

 of the ?>5,000 fishermen in Scotland, and a somewhat larger proportion 

 of those in England, still live, as their fathers lived, by a petty in- 

 dustry, an industry closely akin to that by which thousands of men 

 in Norway and Denmark live. With us they are the men who have 

 been left behind, sometimes from lack of energy, often through poverty 

 or the remoteness of their habitations, by the tide that has carried so 

 many of their fellows to wdder efforts and to comparative wealth. 

 They are the fishers of crab, and shrimp, and lobster, the hand-line 

 fishers of plaice and haddock and codling, the men who take, now and 

 then, a day at the lines, a night at the herring, the dwellers in the 

 antiquated harbours and in the tiny creeks of outlying coast and dis- 

 tant island. The kindliest of Scotch proverbs tells us that " it takes 

 all sorts to niak' a world," and these men have their claim upon 

 us and their right to live. It is not too much to say that nowadays 



