pparent prominence of the fishing industry has decreased, as
that industry has not grown in proportion to the population. Forty years
ago Marblehead and Nantucket were simply fishing villages, and nothing
else. To-day the remnants of the fishing industry attract but little
attention, in the face of the vastly more profitable and important calling
of entertaining the summer visitor. New Bedford has become a great factory
town, Lynn and Hull are great centers for the shoemaking industries.

When the Pilgrim Fathers first concluded to make their journey to the New
England coast and sought of the English king a charter, they were asked by
the thrifty James, what profit might arise. "Fishing," was the answer.
Whereupon, according to the narrative of Edward Winslow, the king replied,
"So, God have my soul; 'tis an honest trade; 'twas the apostles' own
calling." The redoubtable Captain John Smith, making his way to the New
England coast from Virginia, happened to drop a fishline over what is
known now as George's Bank. The miraculous draught of fishes which
followed did not awaken in his mind the same pious reflections to which
King James gave expression. Rather was he moved to exultation over the
profit which he saw there. "Truly," he said, in a letter to his
correspondent in London, "It is a pleasant thing to drop a line and pull
up threepence, fivepence, and sixpence as fast as one may haul in." The
gallant soldier of fortune was evidently quite awake to the possibilities
of profit upon which he had stumbled. Yet, probably even he would have
been amazed could he have known that within fifty years not all the land
in the colony of Massachusetts Bay, nor in the Providence and Rhode Island
plantations produced so much of value as the annual crop the fishermen
harvested on the shallow banks off Cape Cod.

As early as 1633 fish began to be exported from Boston, and very shortly
thereafter the industry had assumed so important a position that the
general court adopted laws for its encouragement, exempting vessels, and
stock from taxation, and granting to fishermen immunity from military
duty. At the close of the seventeenth century, Massachusetts was exporting
over $400,000 worth of fish annually. From that time until well into the
middle of the last century the fisheries were so thoroughly the leading
industry of Massachusetts that the gilded codfish which crowns the dome of
the State House at Boston, only fitly typifies by its p