CIVIL WAR, PETROLEUM, AND ARCTIC 299 



ship" necessitated ever longer voyages. Such cruises meant, 

 for the crews, an absolute decrease in earnings per month, since 

 it now required more months in which to earn the same frac- 

 tional share of a given cargo. And they brought to the owners 

 the unwelcome necessity of employing a larger amount of 

 capital throughout a longer stretch of time in order to attain 

 the same net gain. 



A whaler which was compelled to spend forty-eight to fifty 

 months in filling up with oil and bone obviously incurred 

 heavier bills for refitting and had to replenish her stores of- 

 tener than if the same cargo had been secured in the thirty- 

 three to forty-two months which sufiiced before the Civil War. 

 Expenditures were further increased, too, by the growing 

 scarcity of many articles which entered into the building and 

 equipment of a whaling vessel, and by a high general price 

 level combined with the falling prices of sperm oil and of 

 whale oil. Even the striking rise in the price of whalebone 

 was offset by a drop in production which resulted in a smaller 

 gross income from this source. The 1,337,650 pounds of bone 

 imported in i860, selling at an average price of 80^^ per 

 pound, brought approximately $1,077,000. But the 150,628 

 pounds of 1876, at an average price of $1.96 per pound, sold 

 for only $295,000 j and even the larger crop of 1880, amount- 

 ing to 464,028 pounds and selling, on the average, for $2.00 

 per pound, yielded a gross sum which was almost $150,000 

 less than the receipts of 1860.''^ 



Nor was there any effective means of shifting the financial 

 burdens which followed in the wake of increased expenses and 

 lessened income. For the time being, at least, whaling was 

 conforming with vexatious strictness to the trying conditions 

 of an industry of diminishing returns. 



This accelerated decline in the profits of the whale fishery 

 came at the very time, too, when the opportunities for amassing 

 wealth on land were unsurpassed. The hectic exploitation of 

 the natural resources of the United States after the Civil War 

 presented chances for gain on a gigantic scale which could not 



■'^ These figures were taken from the summaries of production and the calcula- 

 tions of average prices which were published annually by the Whalemen's 

 Shipping List. 



