OF THE GRIMSBY TRAWL FISHERY. 349 
recently constituted District Fisheries Committees will find the most 
profitable outlet for their legislative energy in safeguarding the true 
interests of these smaller communities, while they are fitting them- 
selves for the much more difficult task of coping with the problems 
in connection with the greater fisheries. 
Apart from the question of its production, a small fishing 
community differs essentially from the larger ones in what may 
be termed the social conditions of the industry. Im many cases—in 
fact, in most—the men are fishermen by heredity, and every member 
of the family assists in the trade to the best of his or her ability. 
For generations the men have been fishermen, intermarrying almost 
entirely amongst families engaged in the same occupation, and it 
seems quite possible that it will be some time before those twin 
reformers, the board school and the penny novelette, will succeed in 
seducing any considerable proportion of the race to pursuits which 
may appear to offer greater profits at less outlay of work and hardi- 
hood. In these small communities there is hardly such a thing as 
specialisation in fishery ; every man is acquainted with, and practises 
in due season, every mode of fishing which is possible to him, and 
frequently ekes out his subsistence by farming on a very small 
scale. 
There are among them no fishing companies, not even smack- 
owners on a large scale, but each man either owns his own boat, 
or at least stands in a much more familiar relationship to the owner 
than is the case in the larger communities. 
My own acquaintance with the small fishing centres is confined 
to those on the coast of Yorkshire, and among them we find repre- 
sented almost all stages in the evolution of a modern fishery. Some 
appear to have retained unchanged the condition which must have 
been ancestral to that of nearly all the large stations. Others are 
perhaps in a state of transition. I include Scarborough among the 
larger centres, in virtue of the number of first-class vessels which 
are owned at, if not by any means constantly worked from, that 
port, but it presents certain peculiarities of interest. The develop- 
ment of the fishery, due to the introduction of trawling, has by no 
means swamped the inshore fisheries; while the limitations of the 
accommodation for large vessels, and the competition of other centres 
possessing better harbours and greater railway facilities, appear to 
have put a term to much further progress in the deep-sea industry. 
At the same time the protection afforded to the inshore men by the 
District Committee’s regulations appears to be materially improving 
their welfare, and may tend to bring about something of a reversion 
to the more primitive condition. 
The important part which the introduction of trawling has played 
