62 FISHERIES ARBITRATION AT THE HAGUE 



"They are set in the evening, and in the morning early the fishermen 

 visit them, take out the fish, and if necessary take the net ashore to clean 

 it. Generally, in the spring, when the fishing is good, each net will take from 

 five to ten barrels of fish during one night. 



"But there is a much more expeditious mode of taking herrings than 

 with nets, and that is with seines. Seines for this purpose must be of large 

 dimensions, say from one hundred to one hundred and fifty fathoms long, 

 by from eight to eleven fathoms wide, with braces of two hundred fathoms 

 long. These seines are expensive and require many hands to work them, so 

 that it is not every fisherman that can have one. There are also the purse 

 seines which are used to fish the herrings on the banks, sometimes twenty 

 and thirty miles from the shore." 



Now, you will see that all this legislation, while directed at the 

 seine, is protection of those on shore. The fishermen Sir James 

 Winter and other counsel told us about, who live in their little 

 fishermen's huts, who have little capital, who have a hard hfe — 

 and they must elicit the sympathy of everyone (they certainly 

 have mine) — they have not the money to buy expensive seines, 

 either the ordinary kind of seine or purse seines, and they feel a 

 natural antipathy to the people who come from a distance with 

 these more efficacious implements for the taking of fish, and taking 

 their bread and butter out of their mouths. The purse seine, Sir 

 James Winter very frankly told us, is objectionable because it is 

 more efficacious than other kinds of seines. It is also more expen- 

 sive. It is more peculiarly the implement of the foreigner who 

 comes. No one can complain of the shore fishermen having that 

 feeling. Putting ourselves in their places, how should we feel, 

 dependent for the support of our families upon taking fish as they 

 come into the shallow waters of our bays and inlets, to see great 

 fishing-vessels coming, whether from France, from New England, 

 or from Canada, with the most modern and approved appliances, 

 and taking the fish before they get in to us, instead of coming in 

 to buy the fish from us ? 



I am not going into the question here as to whether there is 

 any other reason against the use of a purse seine than that it is 

 more efficacious. I am not going into the discussion of the ques- 

 tion as to whether purse seines are injurious to fish, or any kind 

 of seines injurious to fish. I am endeavoring to show to your 

 Honors that this is another step, together with those I have already 



