The Wichita daily eagle. [volume] (Wichita, Kan.) 1890-1906, 1894-09-26

There is a frightful waste Of life in
the processes of nature ON these coasts,
saws st. Pierre-Miquelon correspond
ent of the New York Evening Post. In
the water the warfare of each against
all and all against each is eternally GO
ing on. The lobster devours the small
er shellfish which live upon the animal
cules; the prickly oursin, or sea ur-
chin, lies in wait on every stone and
rock for his particular prey; the cod
swallows everything that comes with
in its reach, herring, capelan, squid and
periwinkles for choice; and at this sea-
son the sand is Uttered with the roes
of fish and with the bodies of fry that
have succumbed prematurely in the
struggle for existence. Vast fiocks Of
seabirds help to augment the universal
carnage, and man takes hand in it
too, and often In turn falls victim to
the wintry sea. Yet with wholesale
death all round them there is not a
happier people anywhere than the in
habitants of the st. Pierre-Miquelon.
Apparently the only drawback is the
excessive amount of government.
Everybody and everything is regulated
by decree or by bylaw. The council,
consisting of elected members. passes
DEGREES and bylaws, so does the gov
ernor with his large encourage of
minor officials, so does the colonial
minister in France. The new DEGREES
are published in an official gazette
every week; the new bylaws are pro-
claimed at the street corners by
trumpeter, who blows his horn and
reads them aloud with a considerable
display of dignity.
On the other hand, France takes good
care of the people. The widows and
orphans of drowned fishermen are pro-
vided with work at the ouvroir or at
the laundries where the fshermen's
kits are cleaned, the washing being
done in the mountain streams and the
clothes laid upon the rocks to bleach.
Others work on the graviers, the
stretches of stone where the cod are
dried, getting two francs day with
. little claret. Those who cannot work
are supplied with food and fuel. There
is a most elaborate bounty system
bounties for building dories and small
schooners, for inshore fishing, for deep
sea or bank fishing, for selling the
catch in Europe, for selling it in
America, for exporting the roes to the
sardine fishermen in France and for
extracting oil from the livers Then
there are outfit bounties, the owner of
a craft receiving a sum proportionate
l.. L. 8 4. u
bounties to encourage fishing on the
French shore of Newfoundland and
bounties to promote the manufacture
OF manure from fish offal
1t is necessary to add that this in
tense paternalism has produced the
usual results. If the people are happy,
after fashion, they are also slow and
unenterprising. The American, New
foundland and Canadian fishermen beat
them all hollow at seining herring or
catching cod on the banks. 1t is only
lately that the French have taken to
using dories. Formerly they dispatched
ell hands on the vessel in big cha
loupe to ply the lines, and if the cha
loupe was lost the vessel itself was
thrown out of the running for the
season; whereas if one dory with its
two men aboard comes to grief there
are half dozen others left to prosecute
the work. The Grand Barachois on
Langlade contains tens of thousands of
seals in the early spring, tumbling
about the beach like clowns in a circus,
but this fishery, from which the New
foundlanders make a lot of money, is
not carried on at all by the French.
They rely too much on the cod boun-
ties. which enable them, whatever the
market price is, to urdersell their COM
petitors, and devote but little attention
TO the development of new branches of
fishing or to the Improvement of their
vessels and gear