_The Present System._--The present system of controlling the shellfisheries is based on the communal ownership of the tidal flats. Ownership by the Commonwealth has degenerated into a system of town control, whereby every coast community has entire jurisdiction over its shellfisheries, to the practical exclusion of citizens of all other towns. Thus at the present time the mollusk fisheries of Massachusetts are divided into a number of separate and disorganized units, which are incapable of working together for the best interests of the towns or of the public. This communistic system is distinctly unsound, and is in direct opposition to the principles of social and economic development. The man who advocates keeping farm lands untilled and in common, for the sake of the few wild blackberries they might produce, would be considered mentally unbalanced; but it is precisely this system which holds sway over our relatively richer sea gardens. With no thought of seed time, but only of harvest, the fertile tidal flats are yearly divested of their fast-decreasing output by reckless and ruthless exploitation, and valuable territories when once exhausted are allowed to become barren. All hopes for the morrow are sacrificed to the clamorous demands of the present. The more the supply decreases, the more insistent becomes the demand; and the greater the demand, the more relentless grows the campaign of spoliation. The entire shore front of the Commonwealth is scoured and combed by irresponsible aliens and by exemplars of the "submerged tenth" who are now but despoilers, but who if opportunity were present might become cultivators of the flats rather than devastators. The thoughtful fisherman, who would control the industry in a measure, is under present conditions overruled by his selfish or short-sighted fellow workers, and is of necessity forced to join their ranks by the clinching argument that if the shellfisheries are to be ruined anyway, he might as well have his share as long as they last. The theory of public ownership of shellfisheries has been weighed in the balance and found wanting. The necessity for some radical change in the present system is becoming more and more apparent, and a system of private control, with certain modifications, is the logical result.