Fishing from the earliest times - Blog

—THEIR TRADE-UNIONISM 93kill, but pause not to eat, such fish as escape the meshes.Whenat last the catch is saved, then they fall to and devour the fishalready killed.Here let us note an instance of intellectual anticipation ofTrade Unionism. Well aware that their labour has yieldedfar more than the regulation Trade stroke, and earned morethan the Eight Hours' wage, they quietly await settHng daynext morning—when they are paid by being stuffed not onlywith fish,but also with crumbs soaked in wine.iThus Oppian of another fish-drive," The Fishers pick the choicest of the Spoil,Supply their wishes and reward their Toil."In a story of similar fishing by Mucianus the Dolphinsawait neither summons by voice as above, or signal by torch(as in iElian, II. 8) but "uncalled and of their own accord"present themselves ready for work.Trades Unionism among the Dolphins is again not obscurelyindicated, ipsis quoque inter se puhlica est societas. Furthermore,close corporations, not unlike mediaeval Guilds or modernUnions, but wotting not of " blackleg " or even " dilutee,"surely prevailed, for suum quceque cymba e delphinis sociumhabet.^.Elian's dolphins foreshadow, it would seem, our modernprinciple of co-operation, when " they draw near demanding thedue reward of their joint-undertaking." But their organisationof labour differed from ours in two respects.First, the wiUingness and the wage for night and day shiftwere identical.Second, since they were not blessed as we inthe higher civilisation of the twentieth century are by theexalted, if not always successful conceptions of Conferences^ Pliny, IX. 9 " Sed enixioris operas, quam in unius diei praemium conscii:sibi opperiuntur in posterum : nee piscibus tantum sed et intrita panis evino satiantur."^ In Lapland the " sea-swallows " render great aid in the salmon season.For some cause these small marine birds elect to follow the inward and outwardcourse of the fish, and are thus infalhble guides to the fishermen, with whomthey become so tame that they will light on their fingers, and take, if not " thechoicest of the spoil," scraps of fish. No wonder they are termed " TheLuck-bringers." See S. Wright, The Romance of the World's Fisheries (London,1908), p. 6g.