Peculiar Features of the Fish-Market. 83 
or twelve millions, and no more could be done until this 
closed term was increased. The difficulty has gone on. The 
fishing increasing as the fisheries improved. I am very 
glad that Mr. Blackford has presented this subject as he has, 
and I hope that it will meet with such support as will 
enable us to get more closed time, if not for two days, at 
least for one. 
Mr. Green said: Beginning where the President left 
off, the fact is that there are now twenty fishermen where 
there was one when we commenced shad-hatching. The 
consequence is, as he says, that so many do not reach the 
spawning-ground now as when we commenced. The farmers 
and everybody that had nets and used to put up their fish year 
after year, had stopped fishing, because it was too much 
labor to get them; but now, unless we have a closed term, 
so that the fish can get to the spawning-ground, they will 
run out in time. Our great opponents in this have been 
the net-fishermen at the mouth of the river. Above that, 
every man wants a closed time; but, he says, “Every one 
is going in, and I will go in too;” and they do, and catch 
all they can. Now, if we can get twenty-four hours’ closed 
time, we can hatch several million more fish in the North 
River. Mr. Blackford was talking about the Hudson River 
shad in the New York market, that it had decreased, in- 
stead of increasing. Well, the Western people have learned 
that they can get shad, and now all our Western markets 
are furnished with shad. It is sold in the market, and has 
been for the last five years, from Albany to Buffalo, for 
twenty-five cents apiece—No. 1 shad, too. We never had 
those before, not in twenty years; but now we have No. 1 
shad, and get them from the first hands, not from the second 
