508 MISCELLANEOUS 



that time until the meeting of the house had never been given a hint 

 as to the intentions of the party on this matter. His first intimation 

 of any act to be passed was when that act was brought before the 

 house by the Premier. That was the sort of conduct which drove him 

 to the position he now occupied. He had heard today seemingly 

 from a reliable source, that the merchants of Water Street were going 

 to enter the industry of buying herring at Bay of Islands. He had 

 also been told that His Excellency the Governor while entertaining 

 the members of the upper house a few nights ago said that no less 

 than 740 of our young men had left the country in the last twelve 

 months. He further intimated to them that it would be the right and 

 proper thing if the merchants would prosecute the fishery at Bay of 

 Islands. He, Mr. Cashin, had heard that yarn about our merchants 

 taking up the fishery too often to place any confidence in it. Two 

 years ago it was raised, but it was soon seen that they did not seem 

 over anxious to touch herring when the time came. One or two plucky 

 ones intimated that they would enter the fishery if a bounty were 

 placed on all herring exported. That would mean our fishermen 

 would have had to pay the bounty, which would in all probability 

 amount to the duty on herring entering the United States, and ship 

 owners and merchants would fatten at the expense of the fishermen. 

 He thought he had convinced the Minister or Finance by this time 

 that we do not control the bait supplies of the North Atlantic. The 

 Minister of Finance had stated that if Newfoundland and Canada 

 would combine against the American fishery on our coasts it would be 

 destroyed in ten years. Now, did he cast that out as a feeler that the 

 Premier is expecting to go to Canada and there make a deal so as to 

 further exclude the Americans from this colony. That, at least, is 

 how he, Mr. Cashin, took it. 



The house was told yesterday by Capt. C. Dawe that something 

 should be done to keep the Americans from ruining our Labrador 

 and Straits fisheries. Where do we find that the Americans went, 

 after the Government of to-day drove them from our shores? We 

 find that after baiting on caplin, which strike in in abundance in the 

 Straits of Belle Isle, they make for the Labrador coast, get the best 

 of the fishery and pollute the waters there to the detriment of our 

 own people. When the Foreign Fishing Vessels Act was passed no 

 man conceived that the Americans would have done better without 

 the privileges previously given by Newfoundland than with them. 

 Driven away from the West Coast the Americans had gone to the 

 Straits of Belle Isle, had taken the first school known as the caplin 

 fish, polluted the waters of the coast with the result that those who 

 came after them were much injured, weighed their anchors and passed 

 on. When they were through with the fresh caplin fish, they salted 

 down a lot of caplin and went off to the Flemish Cap, did particu- 

 larly well, and went hqjne to Gloucester with better catches than ever 

 before. Compare them for a moment with the Nova Scotia fleet 

 which had all the privileges Newfoundland could give them. They 

 did not get an average of 800 per vessel and went back to Nova Scotia 

 with less than half the amount brought home by the Americans. 

 The policy of the Americans was to salt down enough bait after get- 

 ting through with the Labrador fishery to last them while fishing at 

 Flemish Cap. Some of the vessels had done well, some had done 

 poorly, but the average result compared very favorably indeed with 



