110: 
THE PRESSING NEED, 
BY CHARLES F. CHAMBERLAYNE. 
Mr. CHAIRMAN AND GENTLEMEN: 
Precisely in what way one nota fish culturist could 
add anything of value to your deliberations has been to 
me something of a puzzle. But in the confessed need 
for adequate restrictive legislation, law and fish culture 
join hands and the law makes, I am pleased to believe, 
a contribution of no mean value to our cause of fish 
preservation. In taking up, briefly, the question as 
how best to secure and enforce such legislation, the fact 
which first and most strongly impresses us is this: That 
while thenecessity of restrictionisadequately recognized, 
it is not always remembered what enormous changes 
time has wrought in the number, energy and resources 
of those whom it is thereby sought to restrain 
The early enemy of fish preservation was the poacher. 
Now the poacher was usually a poor devil of small 
social, personal or financial standing. His ravages were 
limited in extent and usually for his personal eating, an 
offense against society which the state of his pocketbook 
frequently explained and almost excused. Even where 
his illegal fishing was done for market, the slow trans- 
portation of early days effectually restrained the extent 
of his depredations. With the law, the early poacher 
was not on easy, much less friendly, terms. To him it 
was invariably an enemy. He met it usually in the 
justice’s court, and it meant merely fines and frequent 
imprisonments. Voluntarily, he never darkened the 
halls of legislation. All he asked of the law was to be 
let alone. Ostracised socially, not financially, wrong 
legally, early society felt itself amply able to protect 
