ECONOMICS OF THE FISHERIES 321 



various kinds of fish and the estabhshment of habits of steady demand for 

 them. 



Unhke manufacturing establishments in most other fields, which can op- 

 erate on a plan in which all factors of cost, sales, labor, finance, etc., are 

 known or can be closely estimated and provided for in advance, the fisheries 

 in all departments are governed by uncertainty and unpredictability in 

 almost every important factor, so that executives and managers who are best 

 qualified by experience to solve the complex problem of the industry are too 

 occupied with day-to-day crises and emergencies to deal effectively with them. 



Perishability. Fish and seafood generally are among the most perishable of 

 all food products. Their flesh is naturally soft, easily damaged physically, 

 and readily penetrated by bacteria; unlike red meats and poultry which are 

 improved by the process of post-mortem "ripening," fish quickly develop 

 odors which though not evidences of unwholesomeness are universally 

 disliked. 



The greatest of all the problems of local fisheries, especially in the lesser 

 communities without the elaborate technical facilities of a great center such as 

 Boston, is the combination of erratic and unpredictable production in quantity 

 and composition of highly perishable products. This difficulty is often aggra- 

 vated by lack in a given market of immediately current information about the 

 production of other markets. If any dealer along the coast had exact knowl- 

 edge of the current yield at other points widely distributed along the coast, 

 it might be possible to appraise the market prospects, and to take large 

 catches which occur at times if it were found that production of the same or 

 market equivalent species at other points was relatively light. Dealers in 

 communities remote from the big markets rarely have this detailed knowl- 

 edge and cannot afford to take the risk of buying unusual quantities with- 

 out it. 



Standards of Quality. Clearly defined standards or grades have been estab- 

 lished for most commodities, such as coal, grain, cotton, tobacco, oils, lumber, 

 fruits, butter, and many others. Meats entering interstate commerce are 

 inspected and stamped by government inspectors under Federal law. There 

 are no quality standards of fresh fish, and the size classifications which have 

 grown up in practice are generally elastic and unenforceable. Inspection of 

 fish by government or trade association has never been found practicable 

 because of the perishability of fish. A lot of fish might be tagged a certain 

 grade one day and, by deterioration, belie its tag the next day. The individual 

 fishes constituting a lot are too numerous for practical grading, though they 

 may vary greatly in quality. The trade manages to get along without stand- 

 ards, but the absence of standards is just another of the many hindrances in 

 the way of a more important position of the fisheries in the food supply. 



Credit. We have seen that the fisheries tend to be overcrowded, competition 



