204 SEA FISHERIES 



The sardine fishers of Arcachon are " casual " fishers, 

 whose hands have been more familiar with the oyster- 

 beds or the vineyards than with the net or the oar. But 

 who knows that it is not on account of their professional 

 youth, so to speak, to their freedom from tradition, that 

 they immediately adopted the motor-boat ? There are 

 large villages lost in Limousin, Quercy, and the Landes 

 which yesterday knew no illumination but the candle, yet 

 to-day are lit by electricity. 



To sum up : the great majority of our fishermen are of 

 the purely maritime type ; and in spite of recent strikes 

 on board some of the trawlers of Lorient and La Rochelle, 

 the French fisherman is not yet an artisan. 



By this I mean that the French owner of fishing vessels 

 is not often a capitalist. Certainly there are French 

 owners who own large numbers of vessels as at Bou- 

 logne and there are important trawling companies in 

 France, as at Arcachon ; but how many master-fishermen 

 own their own vessels ? How many owners are there, 

 only too often, to one boat ? In France the capitalist 

 control of the fisheries is as yet in its infancy. When 

 new fishing-grounds have been conquered and methods 

 have been improved ; when machinery is more widely 

 used and the by-products of fish, such as oil and glue, 

 are more widely utilised, the seaboard cecumene will 

 break its primitive bounds and take its rightful position 

 in the world. 



