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interest for the fisheries, a “back fire” was immediately 
attempted to be kindled in his district by arousing 
threatened and portentious opposition to his re-election 
and he was of course carefully informed through papers 
constantly laid on his table, of progress of the flames. 
Such persons as were amenable to more sordid and sub- 
stantial arguments were in the hands of other agents 
‘‘with the necessary funds.” The shreds of legal argu- 
ments in favor of the bill were skillfully dressed and 
padded into a semblance of plausibility, the apparent 
hope being that the committee, many of whom were not 
lawyers, might conclude that where so much could be 
emphatically said, there must be at least enough to war- 
rant an opportunity for judicial decision. 
On the other hand, the wellworn arguments in favor of 
such an act were discriminatingly adopted to the sup- 
posed taste of the gentlemen who were asked to swal- 
low them. The ‘poor man’s cheap food,” the ‘note of 
sport,” were relied on. The petty, local nature of these 
State regulations, conceived in ignorance and brought 
forth in prejudice, was incessantly dwelt on. The advan- 
tage to farmers especially in the West and South of 
having the cheap fertilizer made by Mr. Bradley of Bos- 
ton, from the fish scrap of Messrs. Church Bros. of 
Tiverton, R. I., was depicted in glowing terms. Fields 
of waving grain and thousands of bales of of snowy cot- 
ton grew up in plain sight of the committee under the 
magic wand of the petitioner’s eloquence, as the neces- 
sary result of destroying the fisheries of Buzzard’s, Prin- 
cess and Casco bays. The miner’s lamp was destined to 
go out; coal supply cease or advance in price; the shoe 
manufacturer must abandon his business, people go 
unshod should the ponderous wheels of Congressional 
legislature fail to start for the benefit of the gentlemen 
who had banded themselves together into the “Guano 
Association” for they purpose, as they euphemistically 
phrased it, “of steadying prices.” 
