The Republican journal., 1907-04-11
CONCERNING THE CLAM.
What Was Said of This Bivalve in The
Massachusetts, Legislature.


What Was Said of This Bivalve in The
Massachusetts Legislature.
The Massachusetts legislature had a
hot debate last week over bill which
provides that though the Boston har-
Dor clam cannot be dug for food it can
be dug for bait. 1t was reported favor
ably by the fisheries and game commit
tee, but, having got into the House,
most of the members ran away from it,
and when it came up there was left
Chairman Goodwin of the committee
and Bill Newton. All the rest had fed.
The first man who got up pitched into
the clam. The clam, he held, was de-
ceiver anyway. The better clam look
ed the more dangerous he was. Big
CLANS had one microbe, small clans
had another. A clam was bitter
enemy and it had no friends, only foes.
As to this bill, the man was not sur
prised that the men who reported it
were far away. Ashamed of their
handiwork, they could not do else but
retreat.
Then Chairman Goodwin got up, but
he was not warm. He told the House
that he admired the clam. He has sum-
! mered and wintered with it. The clam,
he said, was a more harmless animal
| than the lobster, it was more modest.
A clam, he said, never bothered anyone
who did not go looking for trouble, but
everybody knew that lobster would
reach out and pinch the most inoffen-
sive
CLANS, whatever else might be said
about them, would be great loss if
they could not be had for bait. The
exit of clam would mean that the chow
der as served now would become even
more only name With CLAIMS, he
said, politics would languish and the
people would be driven to the alien
thick Tipped, ard-rinded clam, which
rests and wallows on the Maine coast.
1t was bad move, this reflection at
the Maine clam, for Porter of Ames-
bury was up in a minute. Standing be-
! meath the sacred Goldfish he hurled de-
fiance at the man who would for an
instant compare the Maine to the Mas
sachusetts clam. The Maine clam, he
said, came from the sun laved, sea kiss
ed shores of Old Orchard. 1t was found
nesting in white crystal sands along
that happy coast, where the inhabitants
have nothing to do winters but wait
ers summers. The Maine clam, he
said, was thing of beauty. 1t has
inspired artists and poets. 1t was a
! m dpllDht
the ooZy, muddy, mucky clam of Mas
sachusetts. The law should go further
not only the Boston harbor clam, but
all CLAIMS except those along the Ips-
witch river should be barred. 1t should
be held strict case of law for man
! to attempt to eat one.
1t looked pretty sad for the clam
when he got through, and Capt. Senator
Dixon, master of the good ship King
Philip, bait and chowder free, fare one
dollar to the banks, who introduced
| this bill because he saw ruination star
ing him in the face, got warm all over
and made the signal to Bill Newton.
Bill can talk on anything up to race
suicide, and this was only an opener
for him.
He declared this was an international,
not merely digestive, question. On
the clam, he said, depended the whole
Grand Banks fishing trade. Without
the clam the hardy mariners would be
driven from the seas, the fishing schoon-
ers would become sloops, the sloops
dories, and the dories row boats. He
wanted to know at this time, when in
Washington the battle was being
fought for fishing rights, if the Legisla-
ture of Massachusetts should cut off
hn ph nf Eoh TO- hot
at home.
"Only a few days ago." said Bill,
you killed bill to allow fishing with
nets and declared that men must fish
with hooks and lines, and now you
would follow this by cutting off the
| bait" He had small use for the men
who had become Sqaeamish over the
fear OF being poisoned. Mushrooms,
he said, were dangerous, but if you eat
them, and lived, you know they were
good, and if you died, your friends
knew they were bad. "Isn't the clam,
the native American clam, to have the
same chance as the mushroom? No
clam ever yet went chasing anyone"
| They deserved protection against the
! hordes uf ten-day-old Maine clans, full
of water and rock salt.
mot only did the social life of the
State depend on the clam, but the po-
litical as well. 1t was choWder party
which gave him his first political start,
and he could not but have a reverent
feeling in connection with it,.
81 do not plead for the lordly salmon
of the rich, the bluefish of an ex-Presi-
dent of the United States, the tarpon
of Southern California, where the rail-
road kings alternate their other pas
times with catching suckers ON shore.
II stand" he said, "for the clam, the
clam of the plain people. The fish. that
you can get with muck rake and a
pair of rubber boots, not the creatures
you have to pursue with $50, 900 steam
launch and SIS day guide
| The House ordered the bill to third
reading.
The 1907 cruise of the Boston Yacht
Club will be to Five Islands, beginning