1914 NORTH ATLANTIC COAST FISHERIES ARBITRATION. 



with their country we intend them no injury whatever; on the con- 

 trary, we desire to compete with them on equal terms for the enor- 

 mous market that 85 millions of people in the United States offers 

 for fishery products. In 1890 we said to the people of the United 

 States, Remove the tariff bar that shuts our fishery products out of 

 your markets, and we will grant you all the supplies that you require 

 at our hands to make your fishing a success." 



I call that a fine, statesmanlike, and generous declaration of policy. 

 Then he goes on : 



" The offer still holds good. For the reason that I have explained, 

 the past fifteen years the fishermen of the United States have re- 

 ceived those supplies " 



That is their bait, and so on 



" without the tariff barrier to the admission of our fishery products 

 into the United States being removed by act of Congress, but we 

 find the very men " 



That is the fishermen 



" to whom we have extended such generous treatment are precisely 

 those who have worked most strenuously to injure us in our trade 

 relations with their country." 



What he meant was that the fishermen who have got this bait and 

 these supplies, and who could not carry on their industry without 

 them, have gone back home to the United States and said : " Do not 

 renew this reciprocity treaty." The reciprocity treaty allowed the 

 fish of Newfoundland to come in without a tax, and the fishermen 

 said, and their representatives in Congress backed them up : " What 

 we want is to keep out the products of our Newfoundland friends 

 while we go on buying bait by their kind permission in their ports." 

 Well, Sir Robert Bond is a human being with the ordinary passions 

 and feelings, I suppose, of a human being, plus those of a politician, 

 and he said : " That is a very good arrangement for the United 

 States; we are to give you trading privileges and you are to close 

 your markets against us. You cannot even get your fish here with- 

 out our permission, because you will not take the trouble to come and 

 fish for bait; it does not pay you; what you want to do is to get 

 your bait here, to purchase it and then to carry it off to the banks 

 and fish with it. It is necessary that we should co-operate with 



you before you can catch your fish, and, under those circum- 

 1158 stances, you are asking a bit too much of us when you ask that 



we should continue these privileges while the very fishermen 

 whom we are helping and whose industry we are enabling to be 

 carried on. go and stir up the United States to reject this treaty 

 which we are proposing, and to reject it in order to destroy our 

 market in your country." That was a preposterous position for the 



