FISH 205 



ternal market. Three or four centuries ago the Mediterranean 

 was the chief customer for cod. In recent times Gibraltar has 

 become an important Mediterranean port, and Brazil equals 

 Portugal in its appetite for this Lenten fare, but otherwise 

 there has been no change. The following are the figures for 

 1 87 1 and 1906, both of which were typical years : 



Percentage of Cod and Cod-oil exported to 



Ratio in 1871 Ratio in 1906 



That is to say, Canada, the United States, and England, which 

 fed and clothed Newfoundland, took only 1 7 per cent, of its 

 cod, and the rest of its cod went to countries which sent it 

 little or nothing. What commerce there was in Newfound- 

 land was circuitous and worldwide, and its capitalists were 

 compelled to be members of the world-market. Their 

 business domicile was usually in England, and the Newfound- 

 land merchants who petitioned in 1838 against mob-law 

 included merchants from Poole (54), Bristol (29), Liverpool 

 (19), and Torquay (9), as well as from Conception Bay (79), 

 and the same man often made his presence felt at the same 

 time in Poole and in Harbour Grace, and ' bestrode the 

 narrow world like a Colossus '. He united the functions of 

 moneylender with those of wholesale merchant, and was 

 universal provider of the necessaries of life and universal buyer 

 of what the shipowners and ships-crews sold him. 



Similar causes produced similar results in the shore fisheries, and in the 

 The fishermen were not hirelings, but owned a house, a potato- boat-fisher^ 

 patch, a boat, and everything which they produced ; and were differ- 

 more like peasant proprietors than any other class of people ^^'^^•^) 



