Q. In what you say here do you express the views of your fishermen?—A. I do, so far as I know them.

Q. The views that you have learned from them?-A. Yes, sir.

Q. Have you heard any expression of a desire on their part for the privilege of fishing within the Canadian 3-mile limit?-A. They don't want that. I put down the words that the captain told me who arrived this morning. I asked him about that, and he said that the mackerel were mostly caught by the fleet this year outside of the 3-mile limit, and that he caught none of his 62 barrels inside of that limit. Q. That is to say, outside the 3-mile limit when they were taking them off the Canadian coast?-A. Yes, sir.

TESTIMONY OF CAPT. HENRY COOK.

PROVINCETOWN, MASS., October 1, 1886.

Capt. HENRY COOK sworn and examined.

By Senator FRYE:

Q. Where do you live?-A. Provincetown.

Q. How long have you lived here?-A. I have lived here seventy-three years next November.

Q. You were born here?-A. Yes, sir.

Q. What has been your business?-A. My first business was going to sea in the fishing business and in the whaling business; for the last thirty-five years I have stayed ashore, owning a fleet of whaling and fishing vessels. I once had four whaling vessels, bnt Semmes took them and destroyed them. Previous to that I had some mackerel fishermen, but that business seemed to all run out. Since 1871, the commencement of the reciprocity treaty, it was not a profitable business, and I did not have many mackerel fishermen; I had only two or three, and as it was not a paying business I took them out. Since that time I have been in the codfish business, which was a profitable business until after the beginning of the reciprocity treaty; since then it has been dying out by inches.

RECIPROCITY.

I believe we have had had but one year since the beginning of the reciprocity treaty that we have made anything to speak of, and that was in 1882. I think in 1882 we averaged about $4.50 per quintal for our fish, and we made a good, fair business-we didn't need anything better than that. But since that time and for the last three years my vessels are every one in debt a good deal. I think I havn't paid the captains a dollar for the last three years, and they owe me $4,500. They are not able to pay me anything, and I suppose I shall have to lose that."

COST AND OUTFIT OF VESSELS.

Q. Select one of your best vessels and give me her name?-A. The largest one of them is the Lizzie W. Madison.

Q. What did she cost?-A. Seventeen thousand dollars.

Q. What is her tonnage?-A. Since the tonnage has been cut down her tonnage is 187 or 188 tons.

Q. How many men does she take?-A. Twenty-two.

Q. Please state the length, on the average, for one of her cod-fishing trips.— A. They average about three and a half to four months.

Q. What is the cost of her outfit?-A. That is about $3,000; the wages are about $3,000—that is, for this year; one year I paid $5,200 wages; that was the highest, and this year is the lowest.

Q. What would they be paid per man?—A. They would be paid $140 for the three months.

BAIT.

Q. Do your vessels fish on the Banks?-A. Yes, sir; on the Banks of Newfoundland altogether.

Q. What are your necessities about bait there?-A. We never went in without bait; I always put aboard all the bait we wanted.

Q. What kind of bait?-A. Clams. I put 130 barrels of bait aboard the Lizzie W. Madison and 55 barrels on the smaller ones.

Q. So that you never found any necessity for buying bait on the Canadian waters?-A. No, sir.

Q. Squid are better than clams, are they not?-A. Squid are better than anything. Q. Can you obtain those squid outside the Canadian waters?-A. Yes, sir; on the Grand Banks. This year they threw away all the bait they took from here, and which cost me $3,000 or $4,000. Some years there are no squid up there at all; so that we have to carry the clams from here, even if we afterwards throw them away. We can not get clams without great expense. If the squid should fail any one year, and we had no clams for bait, it would ruin the voyage.

Q. Suppose the squid did not fail on the Banks, and you had your clams on board with which you had furnished your vessels, would you not want to go ashore and buy squid?-A. No, sir; never.

Q. Then, in your opinion, there is no necessity of our fishermen buying bait?A. Not at all. Our Bank fishermen have no use for them. Our people used to set trawls on the bottom. About twenty-five years ago quite a number of our vessels set trawls on the bottom, with a line and hooks attached. The clams were not very good. Our people haul fish in with a hand line. When the clams were not good then they would have to go in and get squid. They bought these squid in Newfoundland. But they don't get any now.

Q. Your opinion is that the privilege of buying bait is not worth anything?A. Not anything at all.

Q. So you would not give Canada anything for it?—A. No, sir.

THREE-MILE LIMIT.

Q. What occasion do you have to go inside of the 3-mile limit?-A. None at all. My charge always was not to go inside of the line if they could avoid it.

Q. Then you would not have them go in except in case of a storm?-A. No; unless an accident of some kind happened, or it became necessary for them to go in for repairs. They do not go within a hundred miles of Newfoundland or any of the

land.

LENGTH OF FISHING VOYAGE.

Q. How long does it take to go from Provincetown or Gloucester to the Grand Banks?-A. Owing to the weather; I have known them to go in four days, and I have been myself in eighteen days and fifteen days.

Q. Do you make more than one trip during the season?-A. Our vessels here do not.

Q. Do you know whether the Canadians make more than one trip a year?-A. I never was on the Banks since they came along there, but I know from my captains' reports that they do make two or three trips. They do not get very heavy trips. They live so much nearer the Banks than we do that they go in and discharge their fish and go out again.

RELATIVE EXPENSES OF VESSELS.

Q. Do you know how the cost of the outfit of Canadian vessels compares with ours?-A. I do not; but I know that their vessels don't cost them nearly so much. Q. Do you know the difference in the cost of the two kinds of vessels?-A. Yes, sir. I have paid $48 a ton and $45 for building vessels, and they only pay $18. Q. But you do not know about the outfit?-A. I don't know about the outfit. Q. Do you know about their sailors' wages?-A. I do not. They don't go on wages; they go on shares.

Q. Has it not been usual with our fishermen to go on shares?-A. They do in Gloucester, but not here. The captain takes the vessel from us on shares. He takes the responsibility and we have to furnish the funds to fit her out.

By Senator EDMUNDS:

Q. The captain hires the men?-A. Yes, sir; and if there is a mate he draws a share with the captain. The captain draws one-half and the vessel the other half.

EFFECT OF THE TREATIES.

Q. You have been in the fishery business for a long while-during the reciprocity treaty of 1854 and also during the treaty of 1870 down to the present time. What has been the effect upon the fishery business of those two treaties admitting fish free?-A. The 1854 treaty did not affect us at all, and I will tell you why. We edu cated those people for fishing, as we have educated every nation on God's earth.

Even Portugal to-day has to get her education from us, and the French to-day fish in the same way we do, with the same gear and with our boats. We have educated the whole world to fishing. In 1854 those people were mostly educated in Gloucester and they remained in Gloucester; they did not go home. But in 1871, when the duties were taken off and fish were allowed to enter free, pretty much the whole of Gloucester went down home, and they built over 500 vessels in one year that they sent down to Nova Scotia. That has done the whole business for us. They were educated here and then went home and built a whole fleet of fishing vessels; and when they got more fish than they knew what to do with they shoved them in here to choke us.

Q. What was the effect upon the general fishing interests of Massachusetts, so far as you know, of that treaty of 1870?-A. The effect is that it has driven us all into debt, and we want to get out if we can.

DUTIES ON FISH.

Q. Then you do not want free fish?-A. No. We get more fish than we know what to do with, even at 13 cents a pound, when we can sell them for that. I wrote to France to know if I could sell a cargo of fish there. What was the answer? "Duties are so high that it would be no use." And therefore they starve their fishermen. Season before last we sent four or five cargoes of fish to Portugal and sold them at a fair compensation. They brought about $7 a quintal. But we did not get our money for nine to twelve months, and we could not do without our money so long. Their way is to sell their cargo to merchants, and then they have to wait there until the fish are all sold, and it is sometimes three months before they will give you your money.

Q. How much duty did you have to pay?—A. Two dollars and fifty cents in Portugal and $2.50 in Haiti.

By Senator FRYE:

Q. Do you know what the duty is in Canada on cargoes from here?-A. Fifty cents. Q. Did you ever send any into Canada to sell?-A. I have carried fish to Halifaxsmall fish-and sold them there when fish were free.

Q. Not since there has been a duty?-A. No, sir.

Q. What country is open to your fish without payment of duty?-A. I can't find any, and I have written all over the world. I can't find anybody but what wants to be paid for them, instead of paying for the fish. We can send some to Martinique. I believe the duties there are not very high, but that is a French port and is crowded with French fish.

Q. How large a fleet is the French fishing fleet?-A. I don't know. quite a large fleet, and their vessels are large-8,000 to 10,000 quintals.

COMPETITION WITH FRENCH FISH.

They have

I had some nice fish this voyage, which I cured about a fortnight or three weeks ago. (I want to say this just to show you how these things operate with us.) I went to Boston with those fish. They were dry fish, not in pickle. I went to the dealers. They didn't want any dry fish at all. They wanted green pickled fish to cut up and put in boxes. Said I, "Why?" The answer was, "We have got plenty of French fish in our storehouses over to East Boston.' They pay 50 cents per quintal and deliver them in Boston. Those dealers in Boston want to kill us out. They are bitter against us. I have a good deal to do with them. They want free fish. They gather those French fish and put them in storehouses. So I had to sell my dry fish for $2 a quintal and they bought their's for $3, and the French paid 50 cents duty. But the Frenchman goes home and his Government pays him a bounty of $2 a quintal. So the Frenchman gets $3 here for his fish and $2 at home, which makes him $5 gross. And that is more than we ever got, I was going to say.

BOUNTIES.

Q. Our fishermen do not get any bounty now?-A. No; we don't want any. I always went against a bounty. We don't want to fare any better than the rest of our people. Give us the same privileges as our farmers. Put duty on our fish, the same as you give protection to beef, pork, and potatoes.

Q. Canada pays a bounty to her fishermen, does she not?-A. They say so-out of what she got from us.

Q. Out of that $5,500,000?-A. Yes, sir; that was all thrown away. I was down to that court at Halifax and I never saw such work in my life. It made me so mad

I didn't know what to do, and I was just as saucy as I was mad. There wasn't anybody in Halifax, none of the merchants there, but what told me before the case was decided, "You Yankees have got the weather of us this time." But, instead of that, we had to pay them five millions and a half.

TREATIES WITH ENGLAND.

Q. What do you want us to do with Canada in behalf of the fishermen?-A. Do nothing with Canada. Leave her out. She only wants to get all the gold from us to send over to England.

Q. What do you want us to do with Great Britain?-A. Let her alone.

Q. You do not want any treaty?-A. What do we want with Canada? Treaty! No. If I had it my way, I would make a treaty and get something out of them for that five millions and a half. What have they that we want?

Senator FRYE. I do not know of anything.

The WITNESS. England is putting railroads through Canada, so that she can draw $20,000,000 gold a year out of this country to go right back to England. She is in Mexico on the south, and in Canada on the north, drawing gold out of this country, the same as she did out of Egypt and every other country. She has got a little colony here and there all over the world to draw the gold out of every nation and send it home. We just want $2.50 duty on codfish brought into this country.

FRESH FISH.

Q. How about the duty on fresh fish?—A. There ought to be a strong duty on fresh fish, too.

Q. What do you know about importations of fresh fish from Canada?-A. I don't know much about it. I only know that it affects our market. There is not much of their fresh fish comes in, except mackerel from the shore of the Bay of Fundy, and lobsters.

Q. And halibut?-A. I guess there is some halibut comes in. I never knew of any codfish brought in; but they would fish for codfish and drive out our fishermen any time; I know that.

Q. Do not our vessels that go for fresh fish take ice to keep the fish?-A. Yes, sir. Q. And they bring them in in ice?-A. Yes, sir.

REFRIGERATING PROCESSES.

Q. Are they then deposited in refrigerators and sent all over the country in refrigerator cars?-A. Yes, sir; they are put into sugar boxes.

SALT FISH v. FRESH.

Q. What, in your opinion, is the effect of the great increase of fresh fish upon the demand for salt fish? A. It affects it very much indeed, because people will use a fresh article before they will a salt one.

Q. You mean it reduces the demand for salt fish?-A. Yes, sir; the demand for salt fish to-day is not as large, in proportion to our population, as it was forty years ago. I was then in the fishing business, and there was a demand for all our salt fish. There were very few fresh fish then. Our population has increased threefold in the last forty years, and yet we do not use much more salt codfish than we did then.

Q. The fresh fish have increased and the salt fish have decreased?-A. The salt fish have not decreased, but their increase has not been in proportion to the increase of the fresh fish.

FREE FISH.

Q. These fresh fish all come in free now, as you understand it, from the Canadian waters?-A. I never knew them to fetch in any codfish.

Q. You have known them to fetch in fresh fish, have you not?-A. Yes, sir; smelts, herring, and mackerel.

Q. They come in free?-A. Yes, sir. That is done away down on the eastern shore, I guess. The southern fishing business is a pretty fair business nowadays for us.

DIFFERENCE IN COST OF UNITED STATES AND CANADIAN VESSELS.

By Senator SAULSBURY:

Q. You spoke about the difference in cost of Canadian vessels, as compared with ours, as one reason why they could fish cheaper than we can. To what do you

attribute the difference in cost between Canadian vessels and ours?-A. There is just about a difference of one-third in the cost of both vessels and outfits.

Q. What is the cause?-A. It is because their country is not so much advanced as ours in their manner of living, and also because of the difference of cost of material and labor. We want to hold up our labor. We don't want a man to work for 50 cents a day. I have hired men to work for me down there for 80 cents a day, and they would work all day long and half the night. For such labor here I would have to pay $2 or $2.50. There is the difference. If you want a good vessel built here you must have good workmen, and you have got to pay them good wages. A man can't live in this country on 50 or 75 cents a day. Their material don't cost them anything hardly. They have an abundance of that kind of wood of which they build vessels.

By Senator FRYE:

Q. They build them largely of soft wood, do they not?-A. The framework of the vessel is hard wood, but in a great many of them the planking is spruce, soft wood. I have been aboard of them down there and talked to the boss workmen. It costs $18 a ton down there to build those vessels, while I can't get one built here in these hard times short of $40 or $45 a ton. We don't want to come under the lash to live and be compelled by our Government to live just as they are. I can remember when we here in Provincetown did the same kind of work they are doing at about the same cost. The first vessel I knew my father to build here only cost him $24 a ton. But it is very different now. It did not cost me half as much to live forty years ago as it does now. What are we going to do? Have we got to fall back and bring up our children to not go to school, or not give them clothes fit to go in, and give then hardly anything to eat? We can't stand that. We will clear out if we can't do better.

TESTIMONY OF CAPT. WILLIAM MATHESON.

PROVINCETOWN, MASS., October 1, 1886.

Capt. WILLIAM MATHESON SWorn and examined.

By Senator FRYE:

Q. Where do you reside?-A. I live here in Provincetown.

Q. What is your age?-A. Fifty-nine.

Q. What is your business?-A. Fishing business.

Q. How long have you been in the fishing business?-A. I have been in the fishing business for thirty-five years.

Q. What kind of fishing?-A. Cod fishing.

Q. In what capacity are you now in the business?-A. I am now agent here for vessels.

Q. How many vessels?-A. Five.

Q. How long have you been acting as agent for vessels?-A. About ten years. Q. During the last treaty and since it expired?-A. Yes, sir.

Q. What class of vessels?-A. Schooners.

Q. Good ones or poor ones?-A. Considered decent good.

AVERAGE COST OF FISHING VESSELS.

Q. What is the cost of any of them?-A. About $15,000.

Q. What is the average cost per ton of good fishing vessels?-A. I haven't built any for the last four years. The last one I built I paid for at the rate of $48 a ton. Q. You think that is pretty near an average for a good, first-class fishing vessel?— A. It was at that time.

Q. What does that $48 include?—A. The hull and spars.

Q. What does the finishing up, the rigging, and all that, add to that?-A. Onethird more.

Q. What does an outfit of one of these 75-ton vessels cost?-A. The outfit would be about $1,500 to $1,700.

Q. For how long a trip?-A. Four months.

COMPENSATION OF FISHERMEN.

Q. How have you managed those vessels for the last ten years, as to crew and all that sort of thing?-A. I hired crews by the trip.

Q. How much a trip?-A. Different wages.