gg COAlMEkCE, NAVIGATION AND FISHERIES. 



Even to this day, substantially all the trade of the county with New 

 York not done by the railroad is done by vessels. The railway traffic 

 within recent years has had an immense expansion, and its volume swells 

 visibly from year to year; in its course it bears away enormous amounts of 

 the products of the soil, the forest and the water, and it brings back vast 

 burdens of fertilizers, lumber, brick, coal, manufactured goods, groceries 

 and even of breadstuffs which, under changed agricultural conditions are 

 no longer grown at home in quantities anywhere near large enough to feed 

 our resident population, to say nothing of the many thousands of tempo- 

 rary sojourners who come among us for some months of summer recrea- 

 tion. I have sought to procure from its officials some details that would 

 show authentically the progress made in this species of domestic commerce 

 during the last quarter of a century, but I have not' been able to procure 

 any. It is stated that the early records were destroyed. Could the exact 

 figures be given they would, I am sure, prove startling in their magnitude 

 as well as conclusive as a demonstration of the activity, the energy and 

 the skill with which the people in this so-called "slow and easy," con- 

 servative old county of Suffolk are subduing to their needs the earth and 

 the sea within their bounds. Yet, great and swift as has been the growth 

 of our railway traffic, it may be doubted if the commerce by sea from and • 

 to the several ports that line the north side and the eastern end of the 

 county and the shores of the Great South Bay, does not exceed it in ex- 

 tent, in variety and in value. It seems to me proper, then, to consider the 

 Commerce and Navigation of our county as practically one subject and to 

 treat them from the same point of view. 



A single word as to the nature and high function of this branch of the 

 theme may be pardoned. If it be true, as has been aptly said, that Com- 

 merce is the handmaid of civilizadon, is it not equally true that she is the 

 foster-sister of agriculture and the industrial arts ? While the former might 

 supply mankind with the simple necessaries of existence, and while the 

 latter might enable them to grasp a fuller measure of comfort and conve- 

 nience than they could otherwise hope to enjoy, or even to acquire some 

 of the luxuries of life, yet the kindly offices of commerce are needed to 

 diffuse the blessings derived from each of the other two, and without her 

 beneficent interposition neither could attain unto its complete develop- 

 ment. 



We assemble to-day to celebrate the 200th anniversary of the forma- 

 tion of Suffolk County as a distinct civil division of this State. On Nov. 

 I, 1683, an act was passed by the Governor, Council and General Assem- 

 bly of the Colony, to divide the province of New York into counties; and 

 Suffolk was described as containing the towns of Huntington (from which 

 Babylon has since been set off), Smithfield (now Smithtown), Brookhaven 

 (first known as Setalcott or Setauket), Southampton, Southold, East- 

 Hampton to Montauk Point, Shelter Island, the Isle of Wight (another 

 name for Gardiner's Island), Fisher's Island and Plum Island. These isl- 

 ands subsequently became integral parts of the towns of East-Hampton 

 and Southold. This, then, is the area within which my theme limits me 

 to a consideration of the commerce, navigation and fisheries during the 

 past two centuries. 



The founders of the first settlements in this county, and many of those 

 who during the first century followed them to its shores, were from Suffolk 

 county in the Southeast part of England, a sea-coast county whose allu- 



