PREFACE. 
Whaling was once a great industry in the United 
States. Whole communities were dependent on its 
success. When voyages were successful there was 
prosperity and plenty. When voyages failed there was 
hardship and hunger. Fortunes were made and lost. 
The foundation of many a stately old mansion in New 
England rests on “oil and bone.”” But whaling was not 
a passing boom, not a thing apart from all other interests, 
not local in nature and local in effect. Its influence as 
a social and economic factor was widespread. Whaling 
was a unit in a great whole—a part of the vast industrial 
interests of a growingcountry. It isso no longer. Whal- 
ing is practically dead. The almost complete cycle of 
whaling activity is a good lesson in economics—the 
lesson of a flourishing enterprise quickly wiped out by 
changing economic conditions. The history of whaling 
forms an important chapter in the commercial history 
of the United States. 
The history of the American whale fishery, however, 
is not an untried field. From time to time discussions 
of different phases or periods in the development of the 
fishery have appeared in print. But there seems still 
to be a field for further work along much the same lines. 
On the whole these previous works on the whaling 
industry are incomplete—incomplete as regards both 
time and treatment. The most recent history was 
published in 1876, but the discussion of the years subse- 
quent to 1815 is unfinished. Furthermore none of the 
