234 
BULLETIN OF THE UNITED STATES FISH COMMISSION. 
owned largely in Massachusetts and New York, some in New Jersey and other States. The hill takes 
off three months of the annual tishing, and three months of the best fishing. 
The chairman of the committee, who has made a scientific study of this matter, tells ns that the 
fish first appear off our coast off the capes— Cape Hatteras, or even farther south, opposite Georgia 
and South Carolina— late in March or early in April, and that from that time on up to the 1st of June 
they are found going farther north, until finally in June they are off Massachusetts and Maine; in 
other words, that this is a bill to prevent fishing for mackerel save off the coast of Massachusetts and 
Maine, chiefly off the coast of Maine, for after the 1st of July the fish are as far north as Maine, 
and many of them have gone still farther north. 
Whether the chairman of the committee took kindly to this measure or not I do not know. It 
may he that there is some New England blood in his veins, and therefore he took kindly to this 
pixiposition of his fatherland. As the State of Micliigan does not l)order upon the Atlantic, ho has no 
mackerel fishing off his shores, and he may have been kindly disposed toward Now England and 
been willing to rule out of tlie fishing business all the Southern States and the States of New Jersey 
and New York. I will not say as to that, but certainly I was greatly surprised to find that the 
Senator from Michigan, who usually takes so liberal a view of all these questions, and who desires to 
legislate in the interests of the people of this country, should have given his sanction to a bill which 
is simply for the purpose of creating a monopoly in the mackerel fishing off our shores. 
This bill is simply in the interest of the men in Massachusetts and Maine who are engaged in 
the salting of mackerel, and is intended to cut short the fishing which takes place along our shores, 
and which produces during the months I have spoken of one of the principal food-fishes of this 
country, being brought into all our ports in enormous quantities, and now by our railroad system 
distributed all along our coast, even as far west as the Mississippi Valley. 
What reason can be given for this bill I do not know. I have waited anxiously for the Senator 
from Michigan to give us some reason for the bill. He seems to defer those reasons until the oppo- 
sition to the bill shall be put in, and then I suppose some overpowering and conclusive argument 
may be produced here which will convince us that we have all been wrong. Certainly, if such 
reasons are produced by the members of the committee or by any other Senator, and my judgment is 
convinced, I shall gladly acknowledge my fault and support the bill. 
It has been intimated that the fish were not good during the months included in the bill, but 
the Senator tells us that the spawning season does not begin until June, and he proposes to curtail 
and stop absolutely the fishing for mackerel until the spawning season begins. I submit to him as 
an old fisherman and one skilled in the art, and as one knowing the science of the fishes, that it is 
certainly a very curious provision that he should bring in a bill here regulating fishing which should 
prevent fish from being caught at any other season of the year save during the spawning season. I 
shall leave him to explain why he has done this. 
Mr. President, this legislation is certainly anomalous. As I said a moment ago, it is in the 
interest of monopoly. It tends directly to create a monopoly. It proposes to put a fence around 
the Atlantic Ocean for three months in the year, and say to the poor and hardy fishermen of our 
coast, “You shall not go out in your boats to catch any mackerel, or if you do catch them you shall 
not be permitted to land them upon our shores.” 
Evidently the amendment which the Senator has proposed this morning, allowing these fish to 
be taken in weirs, nets, and pounds along the shore, has been intended to catch the support of the 
Senators from New Jersey, off which coast much of that kind of fishing is carried on. But if the 
fishing is injurious; if, as he tells us, the mackerel are harassed and troubled by the fishermen until 
at last they are driven away from our coast and we have only the small mackerel of which he com- 
plains loft, how does he better it by allowing fishing off the shore in weirs and pounds and nets? Will 
not all the fish be taken, of whatever size they may be? Certainly everything that comes to the net 
will be taken in, it matters not whether the net is on the shore or off the shore or whether out in the 
deep sea. 
We have allowed American citizens to go out upon our great plains and to fence in the public 
domain and to drive off and keep off citizens of the United States from settling upon it. We have 
allowed great corporations to seize upon the public domain, and to-day there remains but little of the 
public domain which is desirable for settlement and which can be taken under the laws of our Gov- 
ernment. We are rapidly making a monopoly of whatever of public laud there is left in this country; 
and now these few men in the States of Maine and Massachusetts, who desire to control absolutely the 
