ARGUMENT OF ELIHU ROOT. 1977 



Winter and other counsel told us about, who live in their little fisher- 

 men's huts, who have little capital, who have a hard life and they 

 must elicit the sympathy of everyone (they certainly have mine) 

 they have not the money to buy expensive seines, either the ordinary 

 kind of seine, or purse seines, and they feel a natural antipathy to 

 the people who come from a distance with these more efficacious im- 

 plements for the taking of fish, and taking their bread and butter 

 out of their mouths. The purse seine, Sir James Winter very frankly 

 told us, is objectionable because it is more efficacious than other 

 kinds of seines. It is also more expensive. It is more peculiarly 

 the implement of the foreigner who comes. No one can complain 

 of the shore fishermen having that feeling. Putting ourselves 

 1197 in their places, how should we feel dependent for the support 

 of our families upon taking fish as they come into the shallow 

 waters of our bays and inlets, to see great fishing-vessels coming, 

 whether from France, from New England, or from Canada, with the 

 most modern and approved appliances, and taking the fish before 

 they get in to us, instead of coming in to buy the fish from us. 



I am not going into the question here as to whether there is any 

 other reason against the use of a purse seine than that it is more 

 efficacious. I am not going into the discussion of the question as to 

 whether purse seines are injurious to fish, or any kind of seines 

 injurious to fish. I am endeavouring to show to your Honours that 

 this is another step, together with those I have already mentioned, 

 in which the protection of the shore fishery against the vessel fishery 

 is embodied in the policy of the Government of Newfoundland. 

 The question whether a purse seine has any other objection than its 

 efficacy still must be determined by experts, for whom we have 

 asked, and whose appointment I understand our friends upon the 

 other side have objected to. 



Another statute which is not referring to herring fishery, or bait, 

 but which breathes the same spirit, is the prohibition against the use 

 of bultows on the south shore. That is to be found in its present form 

 in section 62 of the Regulations of 1908, into which it comes from 

 some period in the past, on p. 208 : 



" No bultows shall be used on the fishing grounds from Cape La 

 Hune to Cape Ray, both inclusive, in the district of Burgeo and 

 La Poile." 



Cape La Hune was the limit of one of the other provisions, just east 

 of the end of the treaty coast. Now Sir James Winter has told us 

 that the only place on Newfoundland itself where cod-fish are taken 

 in any considerable number is on the south coast. The way cod-fish 

 may be taken is with the hand lines, by the shore fisherman, or with 

 traps, which, as described by Sir James Winter, are those having four 

 92909 S. Doc. 870, 61-3, vol 11 26 



