Arizona republican., 1894-10-07
WASTE OF FISH LIFE.
Continual Submarine Warfare Rag
 ing Of the French Coast.
From the Largest Down 10 the Smallest the Inhabitants of the Waters Devour Their Interiors in Size-Paternal-
 ism of the Government.

There is frightful waste of life in the processes of nature on these coasts, says a 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 CT shellfsh 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 filtered with the roes Of fish and with the bodies of fry that have succumbed prematurely in the struggle for existence. Vast focks of seabirds help to augment the universal carnage, and man takes hand in it too, and often in turn falls a victim to the wintry sea. Yet with wholesale death all round them there is not 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 decrees and bylaws, so does the gov ernor with his large entourage of minor officials, so does the colonial minister in France. The new decrees 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 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 fishermen'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 a little claret. Those who cannot work are supplied with food and fuel There is 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 craft receiving sum proportionate to the number of hands he employs, bounties to encourage fishing on the French shore of Newfoundland and bounties to promote the manufacture of manure from fish offal.
 It 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 It is only lately that the French have taken to using dories. Formerly they dispatched all hands on the vessel in a 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 it's 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 aOout the beach like clowns in 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 undersel1 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.