296 THE AMERICAN WHALEMAN 



and increased in price even more rapidly than the other two 

 products declined. Unfortunately, however, the demand for 

 it did not carry the price to the point where it became profitable 

 to hunt bone alone j and consequently this one favoring in- 

 fluence could not overcome the powerful combination of factors 

 which were making for decay. 



The post-war records of production and of prices for the 

 three major whaling products told an interesting story of joint 

 cost. Since whale oil and whalebone were secured from the 

 same animal, the right whale, their production tended to change 

 in about the same proportion. In 1880 whale oil imports had 

 fallen to one-fourth of their i860 figure, and whalebone had 

 dropped to one-third of the earlier amount. (This discrep- 

 ancy in percentages was probably occasioned by the fact that 

 more care was exercised in saving the higher-priced bone, while 

 less attention was paid to the handling of the lower-priced oil.) 

 In the case of whale oil, the demand fell off in about the same 

 degree as the production, so that the price in 1880 was roughly 

 the same as that prevailing in i860. During the same period 

 the demand for whalebone increased so heavily that the later 

 price was two and one-half times as great as the earlier. Sperm 

 oil, on the other hand, coming from a separate species of whale 

 but often sought by right whalers as well as by sperm whalers, 

 suffered a drop in demand which was even greater than the 

 fifty per cent decrease in supply j and consequently its price fell 

 materially. The following figures, taken at four-year inter- 

 vals from the annual summaries of the Whalemen^s Ship-ping 

 List, indicate the relation between supply, price, and (by im- 

 plication) demand during the two decades i860— 1880: 



