Cornwall, owing largely to a succession of bad years and the competition of steam mackerel drifters from the East Coast, were in a state of great distress. And in Devon the smaller fisheries, at all events, had been suffering a steady decline.' The Devon and Cornwall Local Committees, seeing with admirable foresight that motors were bound to come, and might help their fisheries, joined hands in applying, early in 1912, for grants of 10,000l. each, for making loans to fishermen to instal motors in their boats. After considerable discussion and recrimination, and doubts as to whether Development money could legally be used for direct loans to individual fishermen, a small Committee of Inquiry was sent West. It visited practically every fishing port and village in the two counties, taking special care to learn the views of fishermen themselves. The Report, which appeared early in 1913, did not support the original schemes.

'Indeed, it is not impossible that fishing ports equipped with motor power by means of State aid might intensify the pressure that at present is exercised by commercial steam competition on neighbouring ports, and notably on the smaller inshore fishing stations. There is, too, the difficulty of selecting the individual fishermen, the pull of ports having preponderant or more active representation on the Committees, and a grave risk of patronage or favouritism. Though we have sought every suitable opportunity of informing ourselves on these points, we do not yet understand how it is proposed, under the scheme we have been invited to review, to proceed with the exceedingly delicate task of allotting the funds that may be applied for; and we must needs say that in regard to these same points—the most difficult parts of the matter in actual working-the schemes themselves are more than a little vague. ... We are persuaded that, in any scheme of State-aided credit, provision must be made for the close cooperation of the fishermen themselves in carrying out the scheme.'

The Committee, therefore, recommended the foundation of fishermen's credit banks, which may be described briefly as co-operative societies for combining the small credit of all the members in order to borrow money for re-lending to those members who want loans-a method of turning character into security and credit into cash, of making financial bricks out of men of straw. A

subsidy of 3000l. by way of loan on easy terms was suggested for the credit bank of each county, and an additional subsidy of 4000l. for the four distressed ports of West Cornwall, namely, Porthleven, Newlyn, Mousehole, and St Ives. Further, since the best method of installing motors in large trawlers, like those of Brixham, and in beach boats, had not been fully worked out, it was recommended that a grant of 2000l. should be made to the Devon Committee for that purpose. A Minority Note urged that credit banks, being novel, would take time to establish; that, as usually worked, they are inapplicable to fisheries, since fishermen, unlike small farmers, want largish lump sums for long periods once or twice only in a lifetime, so that the money cannot be turned over frequently; that the need of the West Cornish ports was pressing, if their fisheries were not to die out altogether; and that a loan of 4000l. should be made to them on the Sea Fisheries Committees' plan. A third part of the Report advocated improvements in fisheries administration and the subsidised foundation of a Fisheries Organisation Society for improving the shore business of the fisheries on co-operative lines.

In the end, a grant of 2000l. was made to Devon for the motor experiments, and a loan of 4000l. for 9-12 years to West Cornwall, on condition that the fishermen should be associated with the handling of the fund. Accordingly, a small Administrative Committee was set up in Cornwall; and early last year a Fishermen's Co-operative Society was founded in each of the four ports. Between twenty and thirty motors have been installed out of the loan; and there is evidence that the private conversion of the fleets to motor power has been decidedly stimulated. The atmosphere of the four ports is distinctly less discouraged; the scheme works smoothly; and one of its pleasantest features has been the keenness and good sense of the fishermen committees. If they earn money enough-and in that, after all, the fish will have the biggest say-no one doubts that they will repay the loan. Credit banks, on the other hand, are easier to talk about than to get into working order. The credit banks recommended in the Report have not yet been founded, and consequently the question of subsidising them has not arisen.

Before the Report of the small Devon and Cornwall Committee was out, a heavy-weight Departmental Committee had been appointed 'To inquire into the present condition of the Inshore Fisheries [of England and Wales], and to advise the Board as to the steps which could with advantage be taken for their preservation and development.' It heard a mass of evidence in London, and, what was more important, it went round the coast to see and hear things for itself. Its findings can be read in its very full Report. Suffice it here to say that the advocates of the inshore fisheries were found not to have exaggerated either their value or their present state of decline. The official decorum of the Committee's language rather accentuates than veils the strength of some of its remarks; and its recommendations are pretty sweeping. These divide themselves under four main heads, namely, administration, facilities, fish (including shell-fish cultivation), and business organisation, including finance, marketing, fish-curing, by-products, etc.

Administration.-It was recommended that the Central Department should be strengthened in staff, funds and powers; that, in the composite Board, it should be raised from the position of a Division to a position coequal with Agriculture; and that its head should be a Permanent Secretary with direct access to the Cabinet Minister responsible. The cost of official fishery administration would be wholly a charge on national funds as in Scotland and Ireland; the making, repealing, simplification, and enforcement of all by-laws and regulations would be a function of the Central Department; and the Sea Fisheries Committees would be reconstituted as smaller advisory bodies, composed of nominees of the Central Department, representatives of Salmon Boards within the Districts, and direct representatives of fishermen's societies and associations, whose reasonable expenses would be paid. A most important recommendation was the division of the coast into four or five districts, and the appointment in each of a 'Resident Local Inspector,' not to enforce by-laws but to be in close contact with the Central Department on the one hand, and, on the other hand, with the fishermen and their difficulties. It was felt that such Inspectors, if well Vol. 224.-No. 444.

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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.

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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 Com. mittee 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 2001., 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