of the
Netherlands.[624] There is a considerable amount of truth in the saying
that Amsterdam was built on herrings. New England, with an unproductive
soil at home, but near by in the sea a long line of piscine feeding
grounds in the submarine banks stretching from Cape Cod to Cape Race and
beyond, found her fisheries the starting point and base of her long
round of exchanges, a constant factor in her commercial and industrial
evolution.[625]

[Sidenote: Fisheries as nurseries of seamen.]

Fisheries have always been the nurseries of seamen, and hence have been
encouraged and protected by governments as providing an important
element of national strength. The Newfoundland Banks were the training
school which supplied the merchant marine and later the Revolutionary
navy of colonial New England;[626] ever since the establishment of the
Republic, they have been forced into prominence in our international
negotiations with the United Kingdom, with the object of securing
special privileges, because the government has recognized them as a
factor in the American navy. The causal connection between fisheries and
naval efficiency was recognized in England in the early years of
Elizabeth's reign, by an act aiming to encourage fisheries by the
remission of custom duties to native fishermen, by the imposition of a
high tariff on the importation of foreign fish in foreign vessels, and
finally by a legislative enforcement of fasts to increase the demand for
fish, although any belief in the religious efficacy of fasts was frankly
disclaimed. Thus an artificial demand for fish was created, with the
result that a report on the success of the Fishery Acts stated that a
thousand additional men had been attracted to the fishing trade, and
were consequently "ready to serve in Her Majesty's ships."[627]

The fishing of the North Sea, especially on the Dogger Bank, is
participated in by all the bordering countries, England, the
Netherlands, Germany and Belgium; and is valued equally on account of
the food supply which it yields and as a school of seamen.[628] The
Pomors or "coasters" of Arctic Russia, who dwell along the shores of the
White Sea and live wholly by fisheries, have all their taxes remitted
and receive free wood from the crown forests for the construction of
their ships, on the condition that they serve on call in the imperial
navy.[629] The history of Japan affords the most striking illustration of
the power of fisheries alone