The successful development of steam fishing has necessarily reacted upon the prosperity of the individual fishermen in the various fishing villages, with their smaller, privately-owned sail boats. They were faced with two alternatives: either to combine together to acquire steamers, and so maintain their position in the offshore fisheries, or to devote their attention to the development of inshore fishing. Many of the larger sailing drifters have now been fitted with petrol engines, which make it possible for them to compete with the steam drifters for herring and mackerel. Generally speaking, however, the outlook for the small fishermen of the English and Scottish coast villages—the real fisher folk—is discouraging. The tendency of legislation, however, just before the war was to encourage this class of fishermen by restricting the operations of the steam trawlers in certain localities. In 1910-1914, with the object of protecting the inshore fishermen, the Fishery Board of Scotland prohibited trawling in the Moray Firth area, only drifting and lining being permitted. Since this prohibition only applied to British subjects, certain East Coast fishing companies evaded it by transferring their vessels to foreign flags, registering them in a foreign port and employing a foreigner as a dummy skipper. The Board secured convictions against these offenders in the Sheriff’s Court, but the convictions were upset subsequently by the Foreign Office. The original prohibition was then strengthened by a new law which made it illegal to land fish in Scotland, if caught by vessels registered in a foreign port. During the war, the inshore fisherman found himself in a comparatively advantageous position, as the high price of coal made steam fishing less profitable. Further, the offshore trawling grounds were mostly closed, and the majority of the steam trawlers and drifters were on war-service. For the time being, therefore, inshore fishing with smacks was placed at an advantage. A number of fishermen’s co-operative societies were formed to organize the sale and distribution of the produce of these inshore fisheries. This also tended to make the position of the inshore fisherman more secure. The old order changeth, and although there is that connected with this transformation in the fishing industry which is to be regretted, yet, on the whole, the developments of the past forty years have undoubtedly transformed the fishing industry into a very efficient and valuable national asset. Individually, the present-day steam fisherman is very much inferior to his sailing predecessor. The centralization of the industry in a few big ports, although undoubtedly making for much greater efficiency, bears hardly on the type of the old class of expert fishermen; but these are the almost inevitable consequences of such a transition.