246 
BULLETIN OF THE UNITED STATES FISH COMMISSION. 
the people of the center, the interior, of this country, who are eating lish as they always will when 
they can as a relief to their internal products. They are paying the prices they ought to pay for No. 
1 mackerel, under that well-guarded system of iish preservation, for No. 2 and No. 3. 
The lish that are brought into New York, that the Senator says so much about, arc a cheap 
product; they are a poor fish. I know how poor they are, and everybody who has had any comparison 
knows how poor the lish is that is put on your tal>le at the Brunswick or the Fifth Avenue Hotel, or 
any other hotel there in the mouths of March and April, not lit to bo eaten compared with the lish 
that is caught at another time after the spawning season has passed, and when it has become fat. No 
m.an who has i>artaken of the one will buy the other, notwithstanding the enormous rates and 
notwithstanding the enormous profit that the New York fishmonger gets. 
I did not mean, for one, that the debate should close without the true attitude of this matter 
being presented to the Senate. It is a thing in which everybody is interested, Mr. President. It is a 
restriction upon New England fishermen. It cuts off the work of Massachusetts and Maine fishermen, 
and is a restriction upon them to which they submit because, as I have said, great gain will come in 
the increased value of the fish product later in the year. 
Mr. SuwELL. Mr. President, to remove the impression created by the chairman of the committee 
as to this being a unanimous report of the committee, I beg to say that as a member of the committee 
I dissented from this report entirely. 
Mr. Palmer. I will say in explanation that all the members who were present agreed to it, and 
I supposed that we had a full meeting. The gentleman did not put in an appearance, I think, at the 
time of the investigation. 
Mr. Sewell. Perhaps not; but I find ray name mentioned in the report of the committee on 
almost every page as having questioned tlie witnesses. 
Mr. Palmer. That must have been tbe fault of the stenographer, and not of the chairman. 
Mr. Sewell. I tried for several years to stop what is occurring to-day, the destruction of food- 
li.shes within the three-mile limits on the shores of the Atlantic by what is known as menhaden fishing. 
I was met in the committee and by the gentlemen engaged in this fishing — who have their capital 
invested with over one hundred steamers that occupy the entire coast line of New Jersey during the 
summertime— with the statement, backed up by tbe evidence of Professor Baird and Professor Huxley, 
that man has never been able, up to this time, to decrease the product of fish on the broad seas. 
The menhaden come along our coast the same as the mackerel do, only closer inshore, and they 
are taken, converted into oil and fertilizers, and they damage tbe food-fishes in that souse that 
dragging a purse-net so close in to shore, almost at the mouth of our inlets where the ordinary blue- 
lish go to spawn, destroys the beds for the feeding of the bluefish. But the majority of tbe committee 
became satisfied that nothing man could do would decrease the product of fish, and no action was 
taken. 
The mackerel strike Hatteras about the time that the menhaden do, and they follow the .shores 
to the northward, arriving at the northern part of Massachusetts and Maine .about the 1.5th of M.ay or 
the 1st of June. 
The object of this bill is to give time for the mackerel to fatten. The great fishing fieets owned 
in Massachusetts and in M.aine have found it unprofitable to c.arry on what they have been doing for 
years since the invention of the purse-seine and its substitution for the hook .and line, going to the 
southward and meeting the mackerel off H.atteras; and the whole intent, or if not the intent the 
absolute result, of the bill if passed will be to fatten up .all the mackerel of the Atlantic Ocean, 
following the line from Hatteiaas northward until it arrives at the coast of Maine, where the Maine 
lleet will be ready to take advantage and c.atch them all. It is legisl.ating for a monopoly of the very 
wor.st kind to the exclusion of the natural rights of the people of the Curolinas, Virginia, Maryl.and, 
New Jersey, and New York, prohibiting us from taking adv<antage of the passage of th.at school of 
ii.sh during three months of the year. 
Mr. Hale. Let me ask the Sen.ator if he knows of a single craft of the State of New .Jersey or of 
cither of the Caroliuas or Maryhand th.at is equipped for catching this e.arly c.atch of fish with modern 
appli.ances ? 
Mr. Sewell. I merely st.atc from the testimony in the report of the committee that there were 
seventy-five vessels engaged in bringing mackerel, during the three months in which you endeavor, to 
prohibit it, into the port of New York. It is not a question with mo where they come from. 
Mr. Hale. Does the Senator know of a single vessel in his own St.ato that is engaged in it? 
Mr. Sewell. I do not. 
