26 



represented. Various enquiries, especially that of my Per- 

 sonal Assistant, show that the conditions of the fish trade 

 are not at all satisfactory ; as might be inferred from the 

 status of the fishing- and curing classes, there is no such 

 organization or business power as would enable them to 

 hold their own with the up-country wholesale merchants 

 who consequently have too much power in their hands 

 as reoards both the consiornors from the coast and the 

 retailers in the markets ; goods sent from the coast are, on 

 receipt, often said to be damaged, or unsuitable for the 

 market, etc. etc., and the consignors have to take what 

 they can get ; retailers and consumers similarly have to 

 buy what the wholesale men choose and at their prices 

 which are kept up in various ways ; one merchant in a 

 large town suggested the fable that prices were high 

 because Europeans have come and swept the West Coast 

 with vast copper wire nets many miles long, and sent off 

 the fish to Europe so that none were available for inland, 

 and so forth. Even when no tricks are played the com- 

 mission demanded or the profit expected as wholesalers 

 is ruinously large, simply because there is either a mono- 

 poly or a ring. Now just as Government is alone able 

 to step in and experiment on new methods, so it rests with 

 Government to introduce untainted, good, but — on that 

 account — novel products to a market hitherto undeve- 

 loped ; the wholesale merchants will not risk new products 

 or attempt a new market with untried goods, and though 

 several agreed to do so, none has actually come forward. 

 Hence the necessity for temporary trade, in which 

 Government are, as in new catching and curing methods, 

 simply pioneers, actually developing a trade and markets 

 which do not at present exist and will not exist till so 

 developed ; when developed, Government operations 

 will cease, and the fish trade obtain the whole benefit of 

 the Government pioneer operations. As pointed out 

 above, moreover, organization is specially needed in the 

 transport and disposal of fish either fresh or lightly 

 cured. 



20. Oyster culture. — This experiment, at Ennore, 

 alluded to in paragraph 17 of last year's report, was 

 again tried in September- December 1909 by the placing 

 of fresh tile collectors in reserved area of the backwater ; 

 the result was precisely similar to that of 1908 as to the 

 time and occasion of the deposit of spat and the growth 



