Industrial arts -- Biography; Inventors -- Biography
Some cry for more loans; some cry for more harbours. It would be well
to help with suitable harbours, but the system of dependence upon
Government loans is pernicious. The Irish ought to feel that the very
best help must come from themselves. This is the best method for
teaching independence. Look at the little Isle of Man. The fishermen
there never ask for loans. They look to their nets and their boats;
they sail for Ireland, catch the fish, and sell them to the Irish
people. With them, industry brings capital, and forms the fertile
seed-ground of further increase of boats and nets. Surely what is
done by the Manxmen, the Cornishmen, and the Cockenziemen, might be
done by the Irishmen. The difficulty is not to be got over by
lamenting about it, or by staring at it, but by grappling with it, and
overcoming it. It is deeds, not words, that are wanted. Employment for
the mass of the people must spring from the people themselves.
Provided there is security for life and property, and an absence of
intimidation, we believe that capital will become invested in the
fishing industry of Ireland; and that the result will be peace, food,
and prosperity.
We must remember that it is only of comparatively late years that
England and Scotland have devoted so much attention to the fishery of
the seas surrounding our island. In this fact there is consolation and
hope for Ireland. At the beginning of the seventeenth century Sir
Waiter Raleigh laid before the King his observations concerning the
trade and commerce of England, in which he showed that the Dutch were
almost monopolising the fishing trade, and consequently adding to their
shipping, commerce, and wealth. "Surely," he says, "the stream is
necessary to be turned to the good of this kingdom, to whose sea-coasts
alone God has sent us these great blessings and immense riches for us
to take; and that every nation should carry away out of this kingdom
yearly great masses of money for fish taken in our seas, and sold again
by them to us, must needs be a great dishonour to our nation, and
hindrance to this realm."
The Hollanders then had about 50,000 people employed in fishing along
the English coast; and their industry and enterprise gave employment to
about 150,000 more, "by sea and land, to make provision, to dress and
transport the fish they take, and return commodities; whereby they are
enabled yearly to build 1000 ships and vessels." The prosperity of
Amsterdam was then so great that it was said that Amsterdam was
"founded on herring-bones." Tobias Gentleman published in 1614 his
treatise on 'England's Way to win Wealth, and to employ Ships and
Marines,'[16] in which he urged the English people to vie with the
Dutch in fishing the seas, and thereby to give abundant employment, as
well as abundant food, to the poorer people of the country.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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