FOUL FISH AND FILTH FEVERS. 333 



The laborer's chief daily item of expenditure is for food for himself and his family. 

 Regular, cheap, healthy, fresh, imperishable food, and other foods unadulterated and 

 undiluted, would virtually increase the laborer's wages. The present unnecessarily 

 exorbitant price of food and its inferior quality are the chief factors which often lead 

 to disputes between labor and capital, too frequently terminating- in strikes. 



GLUTTED MARKETS. 



Glutted markets, as applied to fresh food, especially "fish," is a misleading trade 

 term. Thus, because of its diminutive area, together with its inefficient road, river, 

 and railway approaches, and owing to its restricted market hours, Billingsgate is too 

 easily and frequently glutted with fish. No one has ever yet heard of London and 

 the country generally being glutted with fish. On the contrary, whilst Billingsgate 

 partly supplies upwards of 10,000,000 people at home and abroad with fish, many 

 British fishermen, unable to get their fish to market, either have practically to throw it 

 away to manure the land or, in other cases, abstain, while semi- starving, from fishing, 

 because of their having no market for their produce. 



The supply of imperishable fresh fish is independent of fogs, calms, and storms, 

 which now too often cut off fish supplies. 



The introduction of imperishable fresh fish would lead to ;i colossal lucrative 

 export trade. 



saline koddenunk; or meat " koshering" by jews. 



This consists in three processes: 



(1) Soaking meat in fresh water. — With the aim to absorb all available contained 

 blood prior to cooking, orthodox or conforming Jews keep a special cookery pan, in 

 which for about half an hour they soak their meat (killed after their own ritualistic 

 practices) with a view to drain off all available blood. After half an hour this fresh 

 water becomes a pink red color, which under the microscope reveals blood cells and 

 ha'moglobiu (red coloring matter). Chemical tests discover considerable traces of 

 albumen and some alkaline salts. The varying conditions and circumstances make a 

 quantitative analysis impossible as a practical average. 



(2) Slight salt sprinkling. — Next, the meat is slightly sprinkled with salt all over its 

 surface and then placed on a perforated board, where it remains for an hour. The salt 

 becomes of a pink color. On being dissolved in distilled water blood-cells ate discov- 

 ered in the salt mass by the microscope. The Jews throw this red and used salt away. 

 They keep the soaking pan and perforated board scrupulously clean. 



(3) Salt washed off. — Finally the salt is washed off the meat in a stream of run- 

 ning fresh water, as from a tap. Collecting this water, it is pink-red in color, showing 

 under the microscope numerous red and white blood corpuscles, some sarcous elements 

 (portion of muscle fibers or flesh) and some fat cells. Chemically it contains more 

 albumen than the fresh water in which the meat had been previously soaked for half 

 an hour. 



These three processes constitute the koshering of food according to the practice 

 of orthodox conforming Jews. By removing some of the albumen and alkaline salts, 

 in every case it must tend to make the meat of poorer quality. Where the meat is 



