NATIONAL FISHERY CONGRESS. 
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moment’s consideration will show the mistake in this. The true fish are nearly as 
uomadic as the whale or seal and personal property is as readily assured in the one 
as in the other, in proof of which we may note the salmon before mentioned, the fry 
of which was placed in the Delaware and other rivers, whose total disappearance for 
about five years caused the belief that the planting had been a failure, when the 
discovery of well-grown healthy salmon in those rivers proves that they wandered out 
to sea, returning when nature directed them to the shallower and less tempestuous 
waters, presumably for the sake of reproducing their kind. The same can certainly be 
said of other fish, and doubtless the assertion is true that the mackerel, herring, cod, 
and halibut of the lower shores belong to the same shoals or schools as those that 
later swarm to the nets of the Canadian fishermen. Only international protection 
can secure immunity from future depletion if this be so; and this must not be a 
threatening attitude of one nation toward another, but a mutually amicable agree- 
ment, providing that a given number of vessels shall be permitted to fish during fixed 
legal seasons. At first this may look like a tyrannical blow to the men who depend 
upon these fisheries for a livelihood, but the result will soon show that such legislation 
would secure successful catches every season. 
History will show that the times of disaster, when but few returns are obtained, 
have in nearly every case succeeded phenomenally enormous catches. Perhaps the 
bad season does not come directly after the good one; but examine the reports and 
they will show that large returns have induced a great number of vessels and men to 
engage in the business, prospect of gain being the incentive to the industry, until in 
a few years the overproduction results in a falling off, bringing trouble and distress 
to the towns and villages to which the enterprise naturally belongs. Since the fisher- 
men of Galilee deplored their long nights of useless toil and waiting for nets to fill 
there have been men disheartened by failure and consequent distress. The days of 
miracles have passed away long since, but the increase of intelligence in late genera- 
tions and the development of talent and genius were, no doubt, intended to supply 
their place. The law of humane justice must come to the relief and encouragement of 
our fellow-men, and in no way can this be secured with regard to the fisheries except 
through an agreement between countries whose contiguous possessions give them 
equal interests in the inhabitants of the sea or its tributaries. There must not only be 
laws limiting seasons, but vessels and men, so that no one nation possessing greater 
facilities for hunting shall take all the fish and leave little or none for their neighbors. 
International consideration should have been directed to the seal fisheries as soon 
as the United States made the Territory of Alaska its own. Had that been done the 
animals would not now be so near extinction. It is sincerely to be hoped that the 
Fish Commission will not only take these universal protective measures into consider- 
ation, but that it will urge such legislation upon the intelligence of the proper 
authorities, else the efforts now made to propagate and greatly increase the number 
of desirable fish will be eventually futile, as the augmenting quantities will only 
rempt capital to hurry a war of extermination in the effort to secure all that skill can 
obtain in a given period. Neither threat nor watchfulness can secure protection half 
so easily as a friendly understanding upon the subject, which would unquestionably 
result in an international arrangement tending with equal favor toward the good of 
everyone engaged in any and every branch of the fisheries. 
But the protection of fish and other useful water animals must extend farther 
