chosen, would soon become the champions of the fishermen, to represent them at headquarters, stimulate enterprise, keep them in touch with new markets, new methods, and the outside fishery world, and to help them with those numerous legal and quasi-legal grievances and difficulties, in dealing with which-owing to their notion that law and justice are the same thing-they show themselves at present so helpless.

The recommendation as to the Sea Fisheries Committees raised a storm of protests which were curiously similar in wording, but of which not one exhibited any consideration of the practical outcome of the measure, or any apprehension of the fact that advisory committees, strong in experienced fishery members, would exercise a greater influence on fishery affairs than the present Committees, which are subject always to a veto before their by-laws can become operative.

Facilities. Almost everywhere the smaller fishermen have been jockeyed out of prescriptive and customary rights, or are being denied the necessary facilities for good fishing, or have relied on verbal promises which have never been fulfilled; and often they are smarting under their grievances to such a degree that they cannot be induced to attend to anything else, much less to any schemes for the patient development of their fisheries. The Departmental Committee recommended that the Central Department should have enhanced powers of 'intervention, legal or otherwise, where public fisheries or fishing rights are imperilled'; also that

'a general survey of all stations and ports where inshore fishing is carried on, in order that expert advice may be forthcoming as to the need of (a) improving existing harbours, (b) constructing harbours where they do not at present exist, and (c) improving the landing facilities where it is not possible to construct harbours, by the provision of slipways and capstans, the removal of rocks, the construction of channels, or the building of breakwaters. This survey should include, and powers should be given to the Central Department to deal with, the adequate provision of boat and gear accommodation for fishermen in places where they have been driven from, or hampered on, their beaches by the construction of esplanades and shoreworks, the dumping of refuse, or the taking away of beach material.'

Fish. For the protection of immature fish, and in place of the present expensive and ineffective method of trying to restrict fishing and police the sea, the Committee recommended legislation for prohibiting the marketing, sale, or exposure for sale of specified undersized fish; the adoption of such a measure (which would put inshore and deep-sea craft upon the same footing) as the primary general policy for preventing depletion of the fishing grounds; and the consequent simplification of local by-laws.

'With a view to encouraging the installation of motors in fishing craft and reviving the inshore fisheries, and subject to the above mentioned recommendation with respect to the sale of undersized fish, inshore trawling should, in general, be permitted to inshore craft of limited size propelled by motors.'

In respect of shellfish, the Committee was of opinion that the Central Department should put into operation on a large scale an allotment system of shellfish beds, and that it should take active steps to lease layings more cheaply to fishermen or to fishermen's associationspreferably the latter, in order to avoid making public fisheries into private property; for the Committee was 'opposed to perpetual and uncontrolled grants of the shore or bed of the sea to individuals or corporations.'

Organisation.-In dealing with shore-business, the Committee, as may be seen from the guarded yet emphatic language of its Report, was treading on quicksands. For the provision of boats, motors, and gear it recommended co-operative credit and trading, or in the last resort, State aid on the West Cornish model. In fishery finance a closer investigation around the coast has revealed the fact that in some of the ports, at all events, fishermen who borrowed money for boats and gear have been accustomed to pay interest (at from 5 to 10 per cent.) not merely on their outstanding debt, but on the whole sum borrowed, till the last penny has been repaid. Thus, a fisherman who had borrowed, say 2007., and had repaid 1907., would still be paying interest not on the outstanding 107. but on the whole 2007. And when such mortgagee has been a middleman or dealer, the fisherman has usually been tied to him for his gear

or fish-selling or both. Co-operative credit, with the publicity of its juster terms, may be relied upon to put an end to this abominable system of skimming the financial cream off fishing.

But State aid and care-the preservation and development of fisheries and fishing methods, scientific research, the provision of harbourage, and the installation of motor power-will prove useless to the fisherman himself, perhaps worse than useless, unless he can be placed in a position to secure his due share of the increase. At present he is not even in a position to secure the fruits of his labour, such as they are. To the Departmental Committee only one remedy appeared feasible.

'At a considerable number of inshore fishing stations it is admitted that practically the whole of the fish-buying is in the hands of one man, without competition. . . . Under such conditions the only check on the power of the buyer is that, to live himself, he must let the fishermen live. . . . We are left with a strong impression that the inshore fisherman's means and methods of disposing of his fish are highly unsatisfactory. We believe that the only remedy is the improved organisation of fishermen with co-operation as its basis; and we may remark, in passing, that fish merchants who are at present giving the fishermen a proper price for their fish can have little to fear from it.'. . .

Finally the Committee recommended:

"The immediate formation of a Fisheries Organisation Society for the purpose of spreading among fishermen the principles of co-operation for credit, for better business in fishing and marketing, and for other purposes incidental to fishery development. In the first instance, at all events, the formation of such a propagandist society should be assisted, if not entirely financed, by national funds, and its work assisted by the Resident Local Inspectors above recommended.'

At the end of its Report, the Departmental Committee added the following passage, unique in official reports, though not a bit too strong for the occasion:

'We trust that the foregoing recommendations will be carried into effect without delay. Former Committees on fisheries have made important recommendations in the

interests of the inshore and general sea fisheries which have been ignored. Our considered judgment is that our recommendations represent the minimum of what is necessary to be done, and to be done quickly, if the inshore fisheries are to be preserved and developed.'

Most of the Report requires legislation to carry it into effect, and legislation of the constructive rather than of the prohibitory variety, no matter how urgent, is hard to obtain. Meanwhile, the Fisheries Organisation Society has been established at Queen Anne's Chambers, Westminster, with a staff experienced in co-operation, and a grant from the Development Fund of 2000l. Subscribers are needed to help shove off the boat, and local workers to put their backs into the oars. The F.O.S. is prepared to initiate co-operative schemes, and to knock them into shape; but one of the most pressing necessities in fisheries, as in agriculture, is a trust or guarantee fund for financing co-operative undertakings in their initial stages.

It will be uphill work, but highly interesting and abundant in reward. Nothing can be more inspiriting than the revival of a fishery. It pervades the whole atmosphere of a port, as if the air itself were full of life. In the Devon and Cornwall Report there occurs a description of St Ives as it was about two years ago:

'Men of years and experience have left and are leaving the fishing, and young men are going into other occupations. Some ship in trading vessels, others go to the mines, and large numbers are emigrating. The men that are actively engaged in the fisheries of these ports are despondent and disheartened, even beyond making the best of the chances they still possess. On a grey Sunday afternoon, near about sundown, we walked to Lelant, where the St Ives boats are laid up. There, on one side of the broad sand and mud flats of Hayle Harbour, we saw a fleet of seventy or eighty boats, mostly luggers, moored up with old chains and rotting ropes to rusty railway lines of the old broad gauge on a grass-grown quay. In local phrase, they were the St Ives boats that have died. The unpainted hulls of many were ripe and rotten. On their still standing masts, the running gear, left as it returned from sea for another season that never came, had flapped in the wind till it parted. Only one boat of all the laid-up fleet was being repaired, perhaps not for the St Ives fishing. The picture of that silent dead boats' graveyard

remains vividly in our minds. It impressed upon us-more than all the sometimes contradictory representations we had heard, far more than angry protests-the decline of the West Cornish Fisheries. In no light spirit we began our investigations. With a deep sense of the tragedy of the present situation we ended them.'

Last autumn, however, the herrings came properly into St Ives Bay, the first time for years; and prices were high. They went as high, some days, as thirteen to fifteen shillings a long hundred. Boats returned laden from sea. Men staggered up the beach inside the harbour under the weight of the hand-barrows, or 'gurries,' of fine full herrings. The women were out counting the fish, or standing by their menfolk's catches. Salesmen and merchants shouted prices; half the town, it seemed, was down along chackling. Ponies strained into their collars, and went at it with a run, to drag the packed barrels up over the steep hill to the station. The gulls shrieked joyously overhead, over the masts, over the beach and the town. People greeted one in the street with news of the latest big catch, the latest price. One motor fisherman came home with 170l. worth; and long enough he had waited for such luck. Money was coming into the town, good fish money; and long years, too, the town had waited. Men would be back from the mines, and, if it went on, sons and brothers from America and South Africa. It was as if the most brilliant sunshine imaginable had suddenly come out over the grey little town in its wonderful bay, and over the grey people, who had been hanging on tough,' grimly, patiently, with waning hope, and only determined not themselves to expose their poverty.

May such seasons continue! True, it was the war which was responsible for raising the fresh herring prices to a record height. Such a combination of circumstances can seldom occur, though prices, without doubt, can otherwise be raised-and without raising them to the consumer. The revival of the inshore fisheries will be hard slogging work, not without its setbacks, but all the greater will be the satisfaction if some success can be achieved.

STEPHEN REYNOLDS.