Mollan. — Commercial Fish Conservation 77 



and in all waters, finally even chased into the inlets where the 

 last of the great schools sought refuge. The menhaden were over- 

 fished out of existence, or nearly so. When they disappeared, 

 then too disappeared, in very large measure, the fine, valuable 

 food fishes which depended for their existence upon the existence 

 of their natural prey. 



There has never been the slightest prospect of successfully 

 regulating the taking of menhaden by the individual states. The 

 menhaden fisheries were highly profitable and controlled by 

 influential capitalists, and it was useless for one state to adopt 

 restrictive laws which were not in force in the neighboring states. 

 But if we had had, during the last twenty-five years, a federal 

 migratory fish law which included the protection of the most 

 important element in the whole category of coastal fishes, the food 

 of food fishes themselves, it is a hardy soul who will contradict 

 the guess that the take of food fishes of the blue-fish and bonito 

 class, in the year 1919, would have been ten times what it will be 

 this year. 



Give us a sane and just federal migratory fish law, providing 

 at once all proper liberty for present fishing and a rational regard 

 for the fishing of the future, and above all protecting from extinc- 

 tion or undue depletion the sustenance of the fishes, and there will 

 be restored to the people of the country a highly important food 

 factor now become almost negligible, and to the pockets of the 

 fisherman of our costal states many millions of dollars annually. 



