ECONOMICS OF THE FISHERIES 345 



unskilled butchers or retail fishmongers; where the 60 per cent offal plus 

 ice and box are shipped in less-than-carload lots, the shipping costs are 

 obviously extravagant. The practice of filleting at the source helps to over- 

 come this handicap. 



h. Excessive Mark-ups in Prices by Shore Dealers, especially in the 

 smaller fishing communities. In some communities the number of dealers 

 appears to be out of proportion to the number of fishermen and the amount 

 of fish to be marketed, so that to survive on the small amount of goods 

 handled severally by them, the dealers must mark up prices excessively; 

 on a considerable part of what they sell, a second commission is charged 

 by the large city wholesalers. 



i. General Primitiveness and Crudity All Along the Line, of an industry 

 which has never been the beneficiary of the scientific research, technical 

 and engineering improvements in efficiency, expert management and sales- 

 manship which are necessary to meet its competition squarely, and which 

 have only feeble assistance from government, universities, and foundations. 

 We do not even have the basic facts and statistical data from which to deter- 

 mine definitely where and what the weaknesses and inefficiencies are, and 

 to measure them. 



Fishermen' s Share of the Final Value Compared with Farmers'. The net 

 effect of all the factors mentioned above, most of them adverse to fish, is a 

 high cost of distribution which probably cancels most if not all of the low- 

 cost advantage enjoyed by the fisheries at the port of landing. Table 7, 

 prepared by the Bureau of Agricultural Economics, shows, for 58 agri- 

 cultural foods, the farm and retail values, the margin between the two in 

 dollars, the farmers' share as per cent of retail values and for comparison 

 the index hourly earnings of wage earners, and the freight rates. We have 

 inserted a column of figures which are the annual equivalents of workers' 

 hourly wages in money of constant purchasing power, 1926 = 100. The 

 relation of farmer's share and the other costs of processing and distribution 

 for certain particular foods and for all (agricultural) foods is presented 

 graphically in Fig. 2." It is observed that, say, in 1940 the working man's 

 family retail food bill was $314, of which the farmer received $132, or 

 42 per cent, with a margin between the two of $182 for all other charges, 

 expenses and profits. According to the graph, the farmer (in 1934 and 1935) 

 received 40.3 per cent of the retail value of pork (approximately the same 

 as the average percentage for all foods in those two years). 



We have no statistical data on the average retail prices of fish, but it is 



23. The table and graph are reproduced from U. S. Dept. of Agric, Bur. of Ag. Econ., (Hand- 

 book for) National Nutrition Conference for Defense, May 26-28, 1941, Sec. 7, Distribution & 

 Processing of Foods, 11 p. See also, A. C. Hoffman and K. V. Waugh, Reducing the Costs of 

 Food Distribution, in Food and Life, U. S. Dept. of Agric, Agricultural Year Book, 1940, p. 

 627-637. 



