CHAPTER XII 

 PROFITS AND THE COUNTING-ROOM 



THE most significant and certainly the most trou- 

 blesome feature of whaling, as viewed by an 

 entrepreneur, was its element of risk. No other 

 well-established and legitimate industry was sub- 

 ject to such wild and unpredictable fluctuations of fortune. 

 Financial returns ranged from ruinous losses to fabulous gains j 

 and the whaling merchant became not only a vender of oil and 

 bone, but also, and preeminently, a dealer in risks. 



These risks were both varied and severe. Three major 

 types, however, may be distinguished. Labor risks involved 

 the possibility that illness, desertion, or death might bring 

 about the loss of sums which had been advanced to certain 

 members of the crews. Physical risks were focussed upon the 

 loss of equipment, cargo, or vessel through storm, fire, mutiny, 

 or the misfortunes of the chase. And business risks resulted 

 largely from the extreme irregularity of the financial returns 

 attendant upon the cargoes obtained. For whaling cargoes 

 fluctuated violently with regard to quantity, quality, selling 

 price, and length of the accompanying voyage. 



The labor risks of the entrepreneur require only a brief ad- 

 ditional mention. It is obvious that if, under the lay sys- 

 tem, a given whaleman died, deserted, or was incapacitated 

 before the amount of his lay had come to equal the sum of the 

 various advances which had been made to him, the difference 

 constituted a net loss to the owners. Such losses were partially 

 offset, it is true, by the agents' confiscation of the effects and 

 unpaid lays of those deserters whose accumulated earnings 

 chanced to be in excess of their total debits. But in the end 

 the balance was heavily against the owners, and added appre- 

 ciably to their financial uncertainties, 



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