Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 45.djvu/82

70 amount we have been producing; and we are assured beyond question that an abundance of fish, quite equal to these demands, swim along our shores, and that the capture of a sufficient number of them would not appreciably affect their plentifulness. Surely the legislation that prevents the development of this source of wealth must be at fault somewhere.

Such legislation exists in Maine, Massachusetts, New York, and Virginia; and the conditions under which these laws were passed deserve to be cited here. In considering these repressive enactments it will be apropos first to examine the arguments urged in favor of them. Three principal objections to the menhaden fisheries are made: First, that fishing for menhaden, mackerel, or any other fish with a purse seine (the appliance now used) depletes the supply of these fishes; second, that menhaden is the food of many of the food fishes, and the depletion or "driving away of the shoals" of this species by seining, forces the food fishes—mackerel, striped bass, bluefish, etc.—to seek other waters; and, third, that the enormous captures of menhaden for the purposes of making oil and guano prevent the procuring of bait for our cod and other fisheries; it being included in the third objection that inasmuch as cod, mackerel, bluefish, and other species are captured with menhaden bait, this latter fish is a natural food of the food fishes. It is also claimed that the shoals of fish are frightened by the purse seines, so much so that they cease to frequent the shores in the same abundance. These constitute in brief the objections to the capture of menhaden for oil and guano, and form the basis of the reasons why the States of Maine, Massachusetts, New York, and Virginia passed prohibitory laws.

Let us now examine the other side of the question. Before the Committee on Merchant Marine and Fisheries of the United States Senate, February 17, 1892, Mr. William F. Brown, of Philadelphia, said: "The annual value of our" (the Menhaden Association) "product for the last twenty years has averaged $1,500,000, more than two thirds of which is paid to the two thousand men employed. And when you consider that every dollar of this—more than $25,000,000—is a permanent clear addition to the wealth of the nation, because the crude material is taken from the sea; and when you have seen how generally the whole people are interested, directly and indirectly, in our success or failure, you will stand amazed at the recital of the persecutions and legislative wrongs to which we have been subjected." Further on Mr. Brown made a general denial of all the objections claimed by the opponents of the menhaden industry. This statement is backed up by the evidence of Mr. Eugene Blackford, of New York; of Captain Nathaniel Church and his brother Daniel T.