BULLETIN OF THE UNITED STATES EISI1 COMMISSION. 2*1 



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 *••_• ITALIAN I IMII Kill\ IIN s *\ IIMX1N€0. 



[From the San Francisco Chronicle, July 20, 1885.] 



The branch of the fishing industry of this city represented by the 

 picturesque Italian fishermen's market on the sea-wall employs over 

 1,000 men. They are the Italians who supply the city markets with 

 deep-water fish, hut of course they do not supply all (he lisli used in the 

 city, as the Italian fishermen of Monterey Bay, the Chinese fishermen 

 of San Francisco Bay, the Italian fishermen of the Sacramento River, 

 and the American fishermen of the mountain lakes and streams all add 

 their product to make up the tons of fish daily consumed or packed in 

 San Francisco. But the Italians do most of the fishing for the city, 

 doing a deal of hard and dangerous work, and earning the short leisure 

 they so-much enjoy. Much has been written about the picturesqueness 

 of the Italians and their lateen-rigged boats occupying the fishermen's 

 wharf and the sea-wall market, but little has ever been said about 

 the practical side of their business. They are not always engaged 

 in lounging on the decks of their pretty boats, smoking cigarettes, 

 and gossiping volubly, or mending their nets on the sunny side of 

 the wharf. There are so many of their boats — : 265 make use of the 

 new wharf — that there are always enough of them in the slip to give 

 the casual observer the common impression that their chief end and aim 

 is to make that part of the water-front look as much as possible like 

 the Bay of Naples. 



Each of the 1X55 fishing-boats above-mentioned is owned in part 

 nership by the crew that works it. These crews range from three to 

 six men in number, and altogether they have about $35,000 invested 

 in their boats and fishing-tackle. The largest crews are not always 

 carried by the largest boats, as the character of the fishing a boat is 

 used for, rather than its size, determines the number of its crew. The 

 boats on which line-fishing is done carry six men, while the net fishing 

 boats carry three or four. The amateur fisherman, who finds one rod 

 and line quite as much as he has the skill to. attend to properly, will 

 agree that six men are none too many for a boat from which 7,000 hooks 

 and lines are thrown. This is the number of hooks one of the large-sized 

 boats casts when it is out for rock cod and kindred fish. 



The net-boats, which cast for tomcod, flounders, soles, and anything 

 else their meshes will hold, go outside from fifty to a hundred miles. 

 Iu summer they run down as far as Monterey Bay, and in winter I hey go 

 farther north than Tomales Bay. The little craft are carefully prepared 

 for each journey out to sea. Nets are overhauled, mended, and care- 

 fully laid: hooks are baited, and lines coiled; the false bottoms are 

 taken out and scrubbed; everything pertaining to the work iu hand is 

 made snug and ship-shape; and then the provisions for a three or four 



