322 BULLETIN OF THE UNITED STATES FISH COMMISSION. 



STRIKES, POVERTY, FILTH, AND DISEASE. 



By lowering the local general health and means to obtain sufficient suitable food 

 and healthy lodgings, added to excessively exhausting excitement, increasing priva- 

 tion and augmenting poverty, caused by the recent protracted colossal Hull strike, 

 may have indirectly contributed to the subsequent appearance of the cholera at the 

 Hnmber ports. During the strike the sanitary state of the city, especially in its 

 poorer quarters, would necessarily have been more or less neglected. This means that 

 poverty favors the tendency to and opportunity for local tilth accumulations. 



The present frequent colossal British strikes are practically localized civil wars. 

 Apart from the irreparable injuries which they inflict upon the capitalist, trade, 

 strikers, and their dependents, these strikes also tend to start local, if not general, 

 disease throughout the Kingdom. (In the Times of April 9, 1878, 1 showed the horrible 

 diseases which follow war.) 



It appears that when these strikers and their families are practically starving or 

 semi-starving, the local authorities decline to give them relief, even though the trade 

 unions on which these poor people depend are apparently bankrupt, and when the 

 sources of private charity are also dried up. Though probably no nation would now 

 dream of going to war uuless it had arranged a satisfactory food supply under a commis- 

 sariat, nevertheless strikers too often commence their civil war without funds and food. 



Foul tish fostering tilth fevers (which are alike avoidable by superior sanitation) 

 is a lesson yet to be admitted, acknowledged, and appreciated by the general public, 

 who probably has now to thank the hitherto impenetrable ignorance of its fisherfolk 

 and fish-venders for the present (1803) invasion of cholera in the United Kingdom. 



Apparently the 1893 cholera epidemic was home-grown or home-mad^ and chiefly 

 caused by deficient sanitation, due to avoidable local filth accumulations of animal 

 matter in which decomposed fish and fish offal have been the principal factors. In 

 these circumstances there is no reason to suppose that the 1893 cholera epidemic was 

 imported from abroad. 



Instead of being disinfected by carbolic acid and other falsely reputed specifics 

 for destroying putrid material, all bad fish and fish offal should be burnt up in 

 suitably constructed furnaces. I shall again refer in detail to the importance of this 

 subject, which hitherto has unfortunately been generally neglected by home and for- 

 eign sanitary authorities. Suffice it here to say, that usually in our tish centers and 

 markets decomposed fish is stacked and sprinkled with a small quantity of disinfec- 

 tant, often carbolic acid, absolutely insufficient to cancel all the injurious effects, yet 

 quite sufficient to destroy it for manure or other agricultural purposes, 



FOUL FISHING BOATS AND F1SII BOXES. 



In the United Kingdom the too usual plan is, so long as the vessel keeps at sea, 

 that all its catch is kept together for sale. This fish is nnbled, ungutted, and uncleaned. 

 It is frequently bruised and damaged, and stacked in such large masses that the lower 

 Strata of fish suffer incredible injury. Arriving at the fish pier, beach, or station, 

 it is again bruised and hanged about in foul, filthy boxes, pregnant with every kind 

 of putrefactive bacteria and their products. To make matters worse, it is usually 

 packed in ice and melting ice. which rapidly rots and ruins tish, that, of all animal sub- 

 stances, most requires to be kept perfectly dry. As fishing vessels, as well as fishing 





