44 CONFERENCE OF GOVERNORS. 



The early white men learned many lessons in fishing from the 

 Indians, and doubtless those living upon the coast in the course 

 of time began to supply others more remote, until the Cape Cod 

 region, having become famous, attracted fishermen with their 

 smacks from Connecticut and from other States, and supplied 

 most of the lobsters consumed both in Boston and N"ew York for 

 fifty years, or until the middle of the nineteenth century. As 

 early as 1812, as Mr. Eathbun remarks, the citizens of Province- 

 town, realizing the danger of exhausting their fishing grounds, 

 succeeded in having a protective law enacted through the State 

 Legislature, apparently the first but not the last of its kind, for 

 legal restrictions, including this statute, have been in force ever 

 since. But this measure was designed to protect the fishermen 

 rather than the lobster, for it was merely declared illegal for any 

 one not a resident of the Commonwealth to take lobsters from 

 Provincetown without a permit. The laws later enacted proved 

 of little or no avail; by 1880 the period of prosperity had long 

 passed, and few lobsters were then taken from the Cape. Only 

 eight decrepit men were then engaged in the business, and were 

 earning about $60 apiece. This great local fishery was thus rapidly 

 exhausted by over-fishing, and it has never recuperated. 



The history at Cape Cod has been repeated on one and another 

 ■ section of the coast, from Delaware to Maine, and is already well 

 advanced in the greatest lobster fishing grounds of the world, the 

 ocean and gulf coasts of the British Maritime Provinces of Canada, 

 especially of New Brunswick and iSTova Scotia, and in Newfound- 

 land. 



Every local fishery has either passed through, or is now passing 

 through, the following stages : — 



1. Period of plenty: lobsters large, abundant, cheap; traps and 

 fishermen few. 



2. Period of rapid extension: beginning in Canada about 1870, 

 and much earlier in the older fishing regions of New England; 

 greater supplies each year to meet a growing demand; lobsters in 

 fair size and of moderate price. 



3. Period of real decline, though often interpreted as one of 

 increase: fluctuating yield, with tendency to decline, to prevent 

 which we find a rapid extension of areas fished, multiplication of 

 fishermen, traps and fishing gear or apparatus of all kinds: de- 

 crease in size of all lobsters caught, and consequently of those 

 bearing eggs; steadily increasing prices. 



4. General decrease all along the line, except in price to the 

 consumer, and possibly in that paid the fisherman. 



