PLANTING AND FISHING. 95 



In curing the fish, 43,567,922 pounds of salt were used, val- 

 ued at $48,473. 



A total of 878 vessels and boats were employed in Cape- 

 Ann fisheries, manned by 5,250 fishermen, which caught 

 116,034 barrels of mackerel and 68,346,558 pounds of other 

 fish, besides the lobsters ; their whole catch realizing, when 

 landed, $1,901,066. 



Three hundred and seventy-five thousand boxes were used 

 in transporting fresh and salt fish, and boneless codfish. 

 Twenty firms are engaged in preparing and boxing boneless 

 codfish, the demand for which has so increased during the 

 past ten years, that fifteen million pounds will be prepared 

 the present year, the preparation and packing of which, after 

 the fish are cured, employing from two hundred to three 

 hundred men, and some women. Three thousand tons of 

 fish-waste were sold in 1879, at about seven dollars and fifty 

 cents per ton, to enrich the soil. 



Even with this showing of its importance and value, this 

 location, unless the great industry now rapidly concen- 

 trating there receives the attention and protection of the 

 National Government which it is entitled to and surelv 

 needs, may yet become an "ill choice of place," not, how- 

 ever, from any fault of locality, but from the inconsiderate 

 statesmanship of those who should have protected its in- 

 dustry. 



Let us again look at Mr. White's reasons for failure, and 

 consider the farms of Gregory, Ware, Patch, and others on 

 the seashore, and also at West Gloucester, where, within two 

 miles and a half of where the first fishing-stage was erected 

 on Cape Ann, one " planter," or farmer, has this year cut 

 from an acre and a sixteenth of land five tons and four-tenths 

 of first-rate English hay from two crops, and still has another 

 to cut, which good judges call at least one ton more, making 

 his hay-crop from that field at the rate of six tons to the 

 acre ; another has raised from a hundred and forty-seven 

 square rods two hundred and thirty bushels of merchantable 

 potatoes, besides several bushels of small ; while still another 

 has a seedling peach-tree, the growth of his wife's planting, 

 which ripens its fruit as early as the third week in July, of 

 such superior quality that it sells readily, far above any 

 Southern peaches then found in the market. All of which 



