and was continued down to the middle of the last century,
when a treaty with England led to its discontinuance. The wisest
statesmen and publicists differ sharply concerning the effect of bounties
and special governmental favors, like tariffs and rebates, upon the
favored industry, and so, as long as the fishing bounty was continued, its
needfulness was sharply questioned by one school, while ever since its
withdrawal the opposing school has ascribed to that act all the later ills
of the industry. Indeed, as this chapter is being written, a subsidy
measure before Congress for the encouragement of American shipping,
contains a proviso for a direct payment from the national treasury to
fishing vessels, proportioned to their size and the numbers of their
crews. It is not my purpose to discuss the merits, either of the measure
now pending, or of the many which have, from time to time, encouraged or
depressed our fishermen. It would be hard, however, for any one to read
the history of the fisheries without being impressed by the fact that the
hardy and gallant men who have risked their lives in this most arduous of
pursuits, have suffered from too much government, often being sorely
injured by a measure intended solely for their good, as in the case of the
Treaty of 1818. That instrument was negotiated for the purpose of
maintaining the rights of American fishermen on the banks off
Newfoundland, Labrador, and Nova Scotia. The American commissioners failed
to insist upon the right of the fishermen to land for bait, and this
omission, together with an ambiguity in defining the "three-mile limit,"
enabled the British government to harass, harry, and even confiscate
American fishermen for years. American fleets were sent into the disputed
waters, and two nations were brought to the point of war over the question
which should control the taking of fish in waters that belonged to
neither, and that held more than enough for all peoples. To settle the
dispute the United States finally entered into another treaty which
secured the fishermen the rights ignored in the treaty of 1818, but threw
American markets open to Canadian fishermen. This the men of Gloucester
and Marblehead, nurtured in the school of protection, declared made their
last state worse than the first. So the tinkering of statutes and treaties
went on, even to the present day, the fisheries languishing meanwhile, not
in our country alone, but in all engaged in the effort