240 
BULLETIN OF THE UNITED STATES FISH COMMISSION. 
Mr. President, I miglit go on and read the rest of Professor Baird’s letter, hut I will not encumber 
the Eecord with it nor detain the Senate by taking’ the time to read it. I simply wanted to call 
attention to that one sentence in which Professor Baird says that he is satisfied the ahuudance of 
mackerel has never in any way been affected hy man. I infer that it never can he, and I do not believe 
that it ever will be. 
Now, Mr. President, as to the wisdom of Congress undertaking to control this matter hy legisla- 
tion, undertaking to say that our people shall not go out upon the higli seas and bring in the treasures 
of the deeji for the use of our citizens, it certainly is a very i>ecnliar kind of legislation. Whether or 
not it is an infringement of the old doctrine of State rights, I do not know. Whether we can say to 
the people in the Carolinas that during March, April, and May they shall not go off their shores to 
catch any fish, or if they do they must eat them on the high seas, they shall not land them in any 
port, I leave for the constitutional lawyers from that portion of the country to decide. They can say 
whether that is an infringement of State rights or not. But, as I said at the beginning, it is an 
anomalous bill. I have been attempting to find out from the chairman of the committee and from 
other gentlemen who are behind this bill what are the bottom reasons that moved it and that have 
brought it here. We have had all sorts of reasons given, in my judgment, save the true reason. 
Mr. Palmer. I think I gave the reason. I have given it two or three times. This hill is being 
pushed at the instance of the fishermen of the northeast coast of the United States, who find mackerel 
fishing unprofitable and find that their vessels and all their equipments have run down to 25 cents on 
the dollar. That is a sufficient reason. 
Mr. Miller. That may he sufficient for the Senator from Michigan, but that is not sufficient for 
me. It is no sufficient reason why I should support this bill. It is a pretty iilain reason, and I think 
we aro getting to it very closely now. 
Mr. Palmer. It is a much better reason than we had for jiushing the oleomargarine bill. 
Mr. Miller. All I can say about that is that the Senator from Michigan was my chief lieutenant 
in that fight, and made the second speech upon it; and he came into this Chamber, getting up off a 
sick bed to do it, because his people demanded it and because he believed it was right. Has he any- 
thing to retract from his action on that hill? 
Mr. Palmer. Nothing at all. I merely want to ask the Senator from New York to regard and 
observe my consistency and go and do likewise. 
Mr. Miller. I am going and doing likewise, but I am not here to legislate, as I said a moment 
ago, to put a wall around the Atlantic Ocean and to prevent American citizens from going out into 
the briny deep and fishing and bringing to our shores their fish and selling them to us at any price 
they can get. If fish are scarce, the inice is high. If 60,000 barrels come in, the price goes down 
to almost nothing, and our people are benefited by it. 
No, Mr. President, I think the chairman has finally, perhaps, given us the chief reason why this hill 
is lirought here. A few men engaged in the packing of salt mackerel in Massachusetts and Maine are 
finding that the catch is so enormous that the prices are going down, not only upon mackerel but 
upon all other sea fish, and it will not do; their profits will disappear, the people will get cheap food, 
and these men will not get so rich. If that is a good reason for passing the bill, let those who believe 
in it vote for it. 
Mr. Gray. Mr. President, I do not discover anything in this bill that is, in the language of the 
Senator from New York, at all anomalous; nor do I believe that the committee that reimrted the bill, 
of which I happen to be one, have laid themselves ojien at all, in their investigation of the subject 
and in their iiresentation of this hill with their approval, to the strictures of the Senator from New 
York that they have iiresented in its supjmrt “every reason except the true one”; or that by advocat- 
ing this bill they are in favor of monopoly, or are advocating this bill in the intere.st of any particular 
class of the citizens of this country. 
They may be mistaken, of course, as to the grounds upon which they urge the bill. They may 
have not got at exactly the truth in regard to the mysterious ways and habits of the fish that swarm 
the Atlantic Ocean. There was a great deal of testimony on that subject taken before the committee 
and very patiently listened to, and digested in this report; but whatever the results arrived at hy the 
committee, I am very sure that the object aimed at was an honest one, and that object was to jireserve, 
not for any particular class, not in the interests of any monopoly, but for the great mass of the peojile 
of this country, a cheap food jiroduct. Certainly it is worthy of the experiment that we should 
endeavor, in the light of the testimony that is presented in this report of the committee, to seek some, 
way, some mode hy which the diminution of the (quantity and the degradation of the quality of this 
most important food product may be stopped. 
