70 CONFERENCE OF GOVERNORS. 



incur the risk of losing our venture if we should remove the sod 

 and mud from a salt marsh, so that the tide should ebb and flow. 

 For under present laws the fisheries are public, "wherever the 

 tide doth ebbe and flow." The owner might drain and fill the 

 marsh for constructing a cranberry bog, but the present laws are 

 so obscure that no man dares to attempt to convert a similar and 

 suitable marsh into an equally remunerative moUusk garden. 



Depletion of Supply. 

 That there has been a rapidly progressive depletion in the supply 

 , is perhaps too obvious to require discussion. It is evidenced in the 

 higher prices to consumers, in smaller daily wages to the fishermen, 

 in areas of total or almost complete depletion which are annually 

 becoming larger and more numerous. Such are especially prom- 

 inent in Mt. Hope and Buzzards bays; Dennis, Chatham, Wellfleet 

 and Nantucket; in Plymouth, Duxbury, Annisquam and Essex. It 

 has become profitable to bring clams to the Boston market from 

 places as remote as Prince Edward Island; meantime, our own 

 unexcelled facilities are producing less than one-tenth of the 

 average natural and possible yield. 



Causes of Phbsent Unfavoeable Condition. 



The causes of the present unfavorable conditions are referable 

 directly to our present laws, which encourage unsystematic and 

 destructive digging, and fail to make possible artificial cultivation 

 to a degree which will increase the supply sufficiently to meet the 

 increased demand incidental to improved facilities for rapid dis- 

 tribution of the fresh mollusks to markets even as distant as 

 Denver; and resulting from the extensive advertising by summer 

 visitors and the printing press; to the increasing requirements of 

 the canning factory, whose scientifically prepared clam chowder, 

 steamed clams and " clam juice " now make possible, in all parts 

 of the world, a near-Ehode-Island clam bake satisfactory even to 

 those who are to the manner born. 



Furthermore, the present Massachusetts shellfish laws, which 

 delegate the mollusk fisheries to the control of the shore towns, 

 have resulted in few cultural operations worthy of the name, for 

 the reason that the security of tenure is not guaranteed. The 

 lessees are too frequently at the mercy of petty town politics, and 

 disastrously subject to local jealousies. There is complete lack 

 of State or town protection against trespassers. Town by-laws 



