CONFERENCE OF GOVERNORS. 63 



The sole difScuHy is the failure to recognize how completely 

 conditions have changed in the past two hundred and fifty years, 

 and that laws suitable then are no longer adequate to meet present 

 conditions. It was found necessary to give up, more than two 

 hundred and fifty years ago, the communal system of farming, in 

 order to secure the necessary increased yield of food products per 

 acre. Up to the present time, however, there has been no demand 

 for similar action relative to the land below high-water mark, in 

 order that the yield of human food products therefrom may be 

 increased; therefore, the old antiquated law still obtains in the 

 older States on the Atlantic coast. The fishing rights are public, 

 and are so defined in the Massachusetts Colonial law of 1641-47, 

 which says that the riparian owner " shall have propriety to the 

 low-water mark, where the sea doth not ebbe above a hundred 

 rods, and not more wheresoever it ebbs further," but subject to 

 the provision that " every inhabitant who is a householder shall 

 have free Pishing and Fowling in any great Ponds, Bayes, Coves 

 and Eivers so far as the Sea Ebbes and Flows within the precincts 

 of the Town where they dwell unless the Freemen of the same 

 Town, or the General Court have otherwise appropriated them." 



My thesis therefore is, that the present laws do not permit the 

 proper development and utilization of the areas naturally adapted 

 for growing annual crops of clams, oysters, quahaugs, scallops or 

 other food or bait mollusks. I shall endeavor to show that this 

 law has no longer a reason for existence, but has remained on the 

 statute books from a lack of knowledge on the part of the public 

 concerning existing conditions and present possibilities of devel- 

 opment; that this law is a distressingly effective check upon 

 productive enterprises, by placing an undue hardship upon the 

 fishermen and shore dwellers ; and that the public would be directly 

 and enormously benefited if the same rights which have been long 

 guaranteed to the farmers and owners of the upland, whereby the 

 grain and other products of the land belong to the owner of the 

 land, should be extended to the fishermen and riparian owners. 

 If this is done, clams, quahaugs, scallops and other edible and bait 

 mollusks, crabs, lobsters and fish, can be cultivated as securely 

 as are corn, potatoes and fruit on the upland, or as are oysters in 

 the sea. It is our purpose to call attention to present conditions 

 and possibilities as a basis for more extended consideration and 

 appropriate legislative action. State and nation cannot fail to 

 benefit, if the New England States will but do for the fishermen 

 what has been done for the farmer, by encouraging initiative, indi- 



