74 THE UNAPPRECIATED FISHER FOLK. 
SUMMARY. CONCLUSION. 
FRoM the details which have been given in the preceding 
pages, the reader will have learned that no fisherman is 
able to rule his ways of life, or govern his daily work after 
the fashions of our land industries. Those who work in 
factories, members of the building trades, and persons who 
follow similar occupations, can regulate their hours of 
labour, so as to begin and leave off work at fixed periods, 
and to eat their food at fixed hours. Not so the poor 
fisherman, who is a slave to the winds and the waves: he 
must wait till the passing storm has exhausted its fury, and 
the waters have become comparatively calm, before he 
dare venture in his boat from the harbour, in order to 
enrich the national commissariat with the “bounty of the 
waters,” and earn the daily bread required by his wife and 
little ones. And even when he reaches the seat of his 
labour he may in vain cast his lines into the water. He 
cannot compel the fish to swallow his lure, they may not in- 
deed be in that part of the waters into which for the time he 
has dipped his nets, so the disappointed fishers frequently 
return from a toilsome journey no richer than when 
they spread their sail to the favouring winds two or three 
days previously. It is curious that men who have been all 
their lives at the business will time and again fail to hit 
upon the fish, There are no certain rules, however, by 
