No. 3 (1921) MANUFACTURE OF FISH OIL AND GUANO 25I 



the fisher classes. Moreover, if the Agricultural Department 

 would purchase direct from this society it could obtain its present 

 requirements from this single society, and could, by its officers 

 (chemists, etc.), ensure guano free from adulteration and pay an 

 equitable price; this would stimulate the formation of similar 

 societies, and thus, for its further needs, it would obtain a good 

 article at factory prices, supply ryots at minimum prices, encourage 

 co-operative action, and automatically minimize adulteration, which 

 might be taken as any addition of sand or beach-dried manure 

 amounting to above 5 per cent in weight. 



PUBLIC HEALTH. 



158. Where a fish oil and guano factory is conducted with 

 the utmost care as in using only fresh fish, in rapid steam or other 

 boiling, in working only in proper, well lighted sheds properly 

 floored and thoroughly cleansed immediately after every opera- 

 tion, in drying the guano on proper barbecues, in passing the 

 foul water at once into the sea or otherwise disinfecting 

 deodorizing, and utilizing it, there must always be some annoy- 

 ance, mainly in odours, to the surrounding public if in proximity 

 to them, since the cooking of fish in large masses and the 

 exposure of the products to the air for drying, must always be 

 attended with noticeable odours. But when factories buy more fish 

 than can be utilized while fresh and do not salt them, so that they 

 become tainted before or during use, when the " factories " are 

 merely existing houses or huts or sheds altered and utilized for the 

 purpose, or cheap " kutcha " sheds, insufficiently lighted or floored, 

 when the operations proceed by day and night, when the fish are 

 dried in backyards or in wrong places on ill-prepared ground, 

 when the foul water is allowed to run into the sand hard-by the 

 factory and houses and there putrify, where cleanliness, if observed 

 at all, is tardy so that the factory building and premises are dirty, 

 odoriferous, and breeding places for flies, and where the factories 

 are placed right among dwellings and in undue numbers, then the 

 nuisance may easily become intolerable. This has been too much 

 the case, as might be expected from the enormously rapid develop- 

 ment of '' factories " — from nil to over 600 in ten years — operated 

 by petty workers with a minimum of capital, of knowledge, of 

 hygiene, or of civic obligation. Hence a good deal of hostile 

 attention has been paid to the new industry, not always indeed 

 14 



