THE SOUTHERN SPRING MACKEREL FISHERY. 
235 
mackerel market of this country and to raise the price of mackerel in our market from 50 to 100 or 
200 per cent, as this hill will do if it passes, come here and ask us' to put a fence around the Athmtic 
Ocean and to say to our people, “You shall not fish during March, April, and May.” 
It seems to me that it ought only to he necessary to read the hill and to call the attention of the 
Senate to it in order to have it unanimously rejected, for I can not believe that the Senators from any 
State, representing their constituents, can for a moment consent to stand here and indorse and advocate 
a measure which is to make not only mackerel dear in our markets, hut which is to make all salt- 
water fish dear also; for you will find, if you go to the great fish markets in New York and other 
seaports, that the price of hluefish, the price of sea-bass, and in fact the prices of nearly all salt-water 
fish are largely controlled by the amount of fresh mackerel brought into our ports. Mackerel is the 
principal fish, and if it comes in in greater abundance the price goes down, and that carries with it, 
of course, the price of all other salt-water fish. If the number that is brought in is decreased, 
necessarily the price of mackerel advances and the price of other salt-water fish advances. 
It so happened that about two years ago, I think, a great catch of mackerel was made off our 
coast, Mr. Blackford, who is one of the fish commissioners of New York, a man who knows as much 
about the commerce iu fish as perhaps any man in the United States, for ho has been engaged in it for 
many years, tells us something about the results which happened upon the price of fish when the 
great catch was made only a short time ago. Let me read from his testimony, which was taken by 
this committee. Mr. Blackford said: 
As I said when I was l)efore your committee formerly, last yo.ar was an exceptional year there being an enormous 
catch. The mackerel made their appearance about the 1st of April, and iu tlie .sixty d.ays between the 1st of April and tlie 
Ist day of .June there were some 60,000 barrels landed and distributed, not in New York City alone, but all over the country ; 
that is, within forty-eight hours of New York City by express. 
Mr. President, if you will look at the statistics of the mackerel catch of this country you will 
find that the 00,000 barrels were one-quarter of all the mackerel taken iu that entire year. If this 
hill had been a law those 60,000 barrels of mackerel would not have been taken at all, and they would 
have been lost to the iieople, and the result would have been a largely increased price for fish. 
Mr. Blackford goes on to say: 
They were sent in large nuinhers to Chicago, to Cleveland, St. Louis, and as far south as into Virginia and North 
Carolina, and I do not know but that a larger quantity were shipped to the State of Massachusetts than any other State; 
the demand for fresh mackerel there is greater. Those 60,000 b.arrels do not represent all that were taken in the e,arlier 
part of the season. The whole fleet of one hundred and seventy vessels happened to strike the mackerel all at the same 
time, and New York was the great m.arket. The whole fleet came to New York, with the exception, probably, of half a 
dozen vessels that went into Phihadelphia or other ports. It glutted all the usual .avenues of distribution. They came in 
such enormous numbers there that they could not be distributed through the usual channels in time to av.ail ourselves of 
them before they spoiled. The fact is probably familiar to you that men, women, and children flocked to the docks with 
their baskets, .and it was not a question of price. If they h.ad 5 cents they could fill a basket. If a peddler came here 
with a wagon he could get his wagon lo.aded for 25 cents, and in the distribution by rail .and express the dealers simply 
barreled them up and marked the names of reliable dealers in this city and that, and shipped them off for the dealer to 
take and piay whatever he saw lit. I speak of this in order to show you that during these two months mackerel formed 
a very important factor as a cheap food supply of good quality. 
The Senator from Michigan tells us that this is tlestroying the catch of No. 1 mackerel. Perhaps 
that may he true, but 90 2ier cent of the people of this country do not eat No. 1 mackerel ; they do not 
ask for it in the grocery stores; they can not .afford to jiay the jiriee for it. The people of this country 
want cheap food, and under the present system of fishing they are getting it, not only all along our 
Atlantic coast, hut, as I have shown, as far into the interior as the Misdssipiii Valley itself. 
How does this large catch of fish affect the price even of No. 1 mackereP? I might go on and 
read a long time to show how it reduced the iirice of a barrel of salt mackerel at th.at time nearly 50 
per cent. 
It is not necessary th.at I should say here that the price of mackerel, like the price of other 
commodities, depends upon the supply and demand. The bill proposes to cut off one-half the supply 
and thereby raise the ijrice of the other half to at least double the present jirice. 
While the catch of mackerel has decreased since purse-seining has been introduced, it does not 
follow that it should he given up, nor does the bill provide that it shall be given up. If the hill had 
provided that at no time should any mackerel be lauded upon our shores save those taken by hook and 
line, we could then have understood that the committee and the Senator from Michig.an had brought 
the bill here, for the purpose of preserving the species of mackerel and providing that only the large 
fish should be taken and that the small fish should be left. But it does not do anything of the kind. 
