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NEW conflict between the Greeks and the Latins of our own shores is in progress. This war, although involving no territorial conquest or extension of imperial power, is still a bitterly-waged contest, having for stakes an industrial dominion-the producers' rights, so to speak, in a marine harvest of rapidly-increasing value.

In the first grapple between newlycome Greek and Americanized Spaniard for possession of the great sponge industry in the Gulf of Mexico, the Hellene came out an easy victor, wresting within one season from the Key Westers a business they had monopolized for several generations. It was a revolution! The Spanish-Americans, dazed by the suddenness of it, did little more than stand by and watch their

living taken from them. Still it would be a mistake to deduce from this the superiority of the Eastern Greek over the Western Latin, or to infer that the struggle was a natural issue between two opposing strains of blood deeply tinged with a hostility brought down from past centuries. Instead of being a conflict between nationalities, this clinch of the Greek divers and Key West hookers for supremacy in the American sponge industry is but another phase of the age-old grapple which always ends one way. It is the stand of unskilled labor against skilled, of inadequate equipment against adequate.

Until the middle of the nineteenth century the sponge was unknown as an American product. It was imported into the United States from the fish

eries of Europe or of the far Orient. The chief harvesting grounds of the world even as late as 1875 continued to be the Mediterranean and Red Seas.

About the middle of the last century the fishermen of Key West kept bringing to the home docks specimens of sponge-an unwelcome snare in their mullet nets. Finally, an enterprising dealer concluded that he would fit out a boat and crew to experiment in western sponge-fishing. The results being fair, other boats went out after the same harvest, and in the course of time the industry increased tremendously.

More and better craft were soon afloat, and the sponge fishers steadily increased in numbers as well as skill. In like proportion, the amount of the imported commodity decreased until, by 1885, all the sponge in our markets was native stuff except the very superior variety demanded in surgery and chemical experiments. This, too, was finally supplied from our own fields.

Key West remained the seat of the growing industry, as the fishers continued to be mainly Key Westers of Spanish blood, known along the Southern coast as "Conchs", from the habit attributed to them of feeding upon the

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mollusks called conchs. It was not long before the fleet of sponging craft scudding up and down the coast between the "Key" light and the Anclote lighthouse, fifty miles above Tampa Bay, had grown to more than a hundred vessels, well manned and liberally provisioned. The fishers numbered many thousands, the middlemen other thousands. The boats were invariably fitted out at Key West for an eight weeks' trip; then back to the home port, be the catch good or bad. The disadvantages of such a system can be easily perceived.

Near the mouth of the Anclote River a little place called Tarpon Springs was now growing into a town after existing for years merely as the favorite retreat of a few wealthy Northerners who had their handsome winter homes and orange groves along river, lake, and gulf shore of the picturesque region.

Two or three business men of the town, beginning to take an interest in the unique industry of the Key Westers in Anclote and adjoining waters, and noting the advantage of Tarpon Springs as a sponge market, concluded to fit out sponge craft of their own. Between 1895 and 1905 these merchants and dealers put out a score or more of the best boats afloat, drawing their fishers largely from the old class,

BEFORE THE NAVAL BATTLE The Edna Louise was burned to the water's edge, the Greek diving boats scuttled, part of the crew killed, the rest sent to sea in open dinghies. It was thus the Key Westers got revenge.

the "Conchs" of the extreme peninsula and islands, but handling the sponge wholly from their own docks and warehouses, thus avoiding long trips and lost time.

The New York and Chicago dealers soon established branch connections at the new center, and in a few seasons the receipts from sponge sales at the Tarpon warehouses reached four hundred thousand dollars.

But all this time, a full half century from its beginnings, the important industry was carried on by the old clumsy hook-and-pole method. The fishermen worked from small boats, or dinghies, a sculler and a hooker being

THE CATCH OF SPONGES ON THE KEY WEST DOCKS

allotted to each dinghy. For good results considerable skill was required in each of these operators-the sculler having to propel the boat from the stern with the utmost smoothness and to tack or halt dexterously at a movement from his mate, who, lying face down across the thwarts, must search the gulf's bottom through an awkward "water-glass", which was, after all, nothing more than a glass-bottomed pail.

Having discovered his prize, the hooker must spring up, grasp with both hands the long heavy pole fitted at the working end with a clumsy hook somewhat suggesting a potato grubber, and then begin his tussle. If he was an expert, and the skill of his boatman up to the mark, the hooker would finally tear loose his quarry from its life hold on the sea bed. But look at the drawbacks! The weather must be fair, the water calm, its depth moderate. Only the huskiest operators can handle with advantage a pole thirtyfive feet in length, and the best sponges are found from that depth upward. On the whole, it is remarkable that with methods so crude the Key Westers

were ever able to bring the annual yield up to the million-dollar value. Yet this they did at last, vaunting loudly of the heritage to be left to their sons in so goodly an industry.

Then came the revolution. A young Greek, John Cocoris by name, chancing to be employed as packer in one of the Anclote sponge houses, scoffed frequently at the clumsy American method of gathering the valuable zoöphyte, and ended by persuading his employer, Mr. Cheyney, "the sponge king of Tarpon", to import Greek divers from the Mediterranean.

It was a good season, and the Key West fleet came up early. The "Conch" hookers found only amusement in the presence about Anclote of half a dozen Greeks, a diving outfit or two, and a couple of small boats lateen-rigged as

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the foreigners had practically captured the industry from the old-liners, some of whom, however, worked on sullenly and half-heartedly, while the majority held off, awaiting the reaction they felt sure must come. Tarpon Springs was speedily Hellenized, and so was American sponge fishing. The lateen sails of the Mediterranean are today as common in this part of the Gulf as the "cat rig" of the mullet men, but under the sails is now the gasoline auxiliary.

There are at present more than three thousand Greeks engaged directly in this industry, and more than twice as many maintained indirectly by it. The divers are high-priced men. Numbers of them have brought their families over, and now own handsome homes. The sponge traffic is already bringing normally more than a million dollars

in pictures of Columbus' day. They failed to interpret the omens-these old-liners to read in the innovation anything but a transient spectacular in

terest.

Within the year the Greek invasion had assumed formidable proportions. Fifty boats with diving crews were at work and many other boats were

per annum to this one little port, and the American markets have been held for several years exclusively by the home-grown product. For half a dozen years, also, there has been an annually. increasing export to England, particularly of our grass sponge, a stout, coarse article which the Britisher uses to great advantage in the manufacture

equipment and skill have in a twinkling revolutionized a business, but never before has an industry been snatched so swiftly, and by an alien people, from a class of workers who had monopolized it for generations.

But what are the Key Westers doing? There is the crux of the matter at this moment. Holding off at first, waiting, as they said, for "the high falutin' jinks of the divin' dagoes" to come to an end, as they felt sure must happen, and sponge fishing to return to the normal basis on which their grandfathers had left it, our seafaring Western Latins made few hostile demonstrations in the early stage of the game. Some picked up a living at home for a while, many idled, and a number still kept to their dinghies and their hooks, hating the Greeks like they do devilfish, deriding their "half moon" boats, and hooting at the diving armor.

However, when these slow-thinking sea folk of ours finally got it into their heads that the foreigners were really taking their living away from them, they called imploringly upon their lawmakers, their officials of every class, invoking the mighty State of Florida to protect her own.

But little came from the dozen or more phases of protective and prohibitive legislation.

As the Key Westers lost temper and hope the Greeks grew bolder, more assured. Keeping for several years strictly to the deeper waters in the vicinity of Anclote, they began later to push southward, gleaning and exploring the lower beds. Finally, at the opening of the 1914 season, a small squadron of the Tarpon vessels sailed down to work near Grand Cayman and the Tortugas, gathering considerable cargoes from those waters. Toward the latter end of May two of the finest boats of their fleet, the Amelia and the Edna Louise, berthed in the Key West harbor, the captains and some of the

quences of the bravado were not in the least surprising when one considers the temper of these people and the deep grudge they bear those who have seized their inheritance.

The native fishers hastily banded together in three squads. One went out to scuttle and sink the Amelia, another to set fire to the Edna Louise, after forcing the crew aboard small dinghies, while the third rounded up the Greeks and their sailors who were ashore and chased them down to the docks, where the foreigners took to the water, diving and swimming for safety until officers of the law reached the water front and dispersed the mob.

Only two, or possibly three, of the foreigners were killed in this first skirmish, but more than fifty thousand dollars' worth of property was destroyed in a few minutes and much violence done. Other attacks followed, on the islands and in the bays and harbors of the American archipelago, until government boats with very formidable guns were hurried down to take charge of the situation. Congressional investigation of the outrages is still going on, and federal authorities have promulgated declarations of their intention to punish the offenders when caught, and henceforth adequately protect, both in and out of port, not only the property of the sponge investors of Tarpon Springs, but also the lives and rights of the Greek divers, thousands of whom are now naturalized. These men have become hard-working citizens whose interests and rights are almost identical with those of their predecessors.

Like every industrial war, this is expensive both to the individual and the State; nor is the end in sight. But, in the name of progress and commonsense, why do not the Key Westers solve the situation by adopting diving suits and methods for themselves? You ask it very naturally, and the answer at this end of the line is ready: