328 MARINE FISHERIES OF NORTH CAROLINA 



But an even more serious difficulty with cooperatives, which seems to have 

 been the basic cause of failure of most of those which have been tried, is the 

 practical difficulty of finding and hiring men with the experience, energy, 

 imagination and general business ability, of providing them with the incen- 

 tive to build a sound merchandising organization and to keep the peace among 

 strongly rival and individualistic members. Men who have these talents are 

 usually in business for themselves. Fishermen might well be reluctant to pay 

 the handsome salaries and participation in profits which are necessary to get 

 sufficiently able management. 



e. Marketing by Fishermen for Canneries, Freezers and other Processors. 

 In a considerable part of the fisheries, the traps, vessels, etc., are owned in 

 whole or part by the shore plants. Fishermen are engaged to fish the traps 

 and man the vessels under an arrangement for a season at a fixed price per 

 pound, barrel or other unit. These transactions are sometimes called sales, 

 but are actually wages for labor, the amount of compensation being deter- 

 mined by the catch, at a pre-fixed rate. A considerable part of the time and 

 labor involved may be constant, the variable being in setting and hauling 

 nets, unrigging and rigging pound traps, etc. 



MARKETING, DISTRIBUTION, AND CONSUMPTION 



Place of the Fisheries in the Food Industry. The fisheries are dominated at 

 the extreme ends of the production-distribution chain by two refractory 

 determinants; at the source by unlimited competition in the non-privately 

 owned water; at the extreme opposite, the point of consumption, by the 

 almost constant per capita requirement for food, which is the main deter- 

 minant of the food industry. The greater part of the commerce in fishery 

 products is in human food and subject to this determinant. 



Inelastic Demand for Food. The per capita consumption of food of all 

 kinds, including the water content, bones, husks, fats, and other wastes, is 

 variously estimated at from 1500 to 1800 pounds per year. The estimates 

 differ largely in what weights are used and, of course, contain undeterminable 

 errors. Sherman et al. (1944) estimated on the basis of a house-to-house 

 canvass that housekeeping families and single persons in the civilian non- 

 institutional population of the United States consumed at home an average 

 of almost 30 pounds of food per person per week, as brought into family 

 kitchens from retail stores, garden or farm, but before further preparation 

 for table use. They estimated the unavoidable refuse at about 8 per cent plus 

 undetermined avoidable waste. 



Harper (1945) estimated that the per capita consumption of food through- 

 out the world is also not far from constant: 



