18 Fish, Fishing and Fisheries of Pennsylvania. 



value and importance of the shad fisheries at that early day to the peo- 

 ple on the Susquehanna river than to repeat an anecdote told me long' 

 years after by a genial gentleman of New England, who in youth vis- 

 ited my father at his home in Wyoming'. 



Leaning on the front gate, after breakfast, as the little children were 

 passing to school, each with a little basket, the universal answer from 

 their cherry, upturned little faces was, "bread and shad," "br^ad and 

 shad" (corn bread, at that). 



The cheapness with which shad and other fishes could be had, especi- 

 ally in Philadelphia and Pittsburg, was not altogether an unalloyed 

 pleasure to every dweller in the commonwealth in the earlier years of 

 the present century. The low prices tempted many master mechanics 

 to keep their apprentices almost altogether in a fish diet. To this the 

 embryonic workmen at length objected, and a bitter, wordy strife en- 

 sued, a battle which ended triumphantly for the apprentices who suc- 

 ceeded in having inserted in their indentures a clause that they were 

 not to be fed on fish more than twice a week. One old gentleman with 

 whom the writer is acquainted says, however, that he thinks the condi- 

 tion of the apprentices was scarcely bettered through their triumph for 

 about that time the "merino sheep craze" swept over the country, and 

 for fish was substituted mutton and molasses in generous quantities. 



