350 MARINE FISHERIES OF NORTH CAROLINA 



Importance of Technical Improvements and Merchandising Enterprise. 

 It is known that Kansas City and St. Louis are among the best markets in 

 the interior of the country for certain kinds of ocean fishes. They were 

 for years oases in a fisheries market desert. The origin of these markets 

 was the enterprise of particularly able merchants and their organizations 

 operating effectively for many years. These examples show clearly that 

 demand for fish is subject to change, can be created and encouraged by 

 aggressive effort, and can have an important bearing on the possibilities of 

 marketing fish in North Carolina. 



The most effective development for increasing the share of fish in the 

 national dietary has been and is the combination filleting-packaging-quick- 

 freezing-refrigerated cars and trucks and deep-freeze-retail-and-home-cab- 

 inets. These items and developments here concatenated are one development. 



Up to the end of World War I, all fish that were not canned or cured 

 were shipped whole in boxes or barrels of ice. One hundred pounds of whole 

 fish with a like amount of ice and 25 pounds of barrel or box weighed 

 225 pounds and contained 40 pounds of edible fish. This perishable product, 

 with a bad record for spoilage and refusal, took the highest railroad and 

 express tariff, and on arrival at city of destination was practically excluded 

 by its disagreeable nature from favorable location by landlords and zoning 

 regulations, and from food shops where other goods were sold; it was forced 

 to some poorly accessible corner of the city market. Finally, when and if 

 purchased, the housewife often had the problem of disposal of 60 per cent 

 of the whole as useless and disagreeable waste. The new marketing tech- 

 nique began in 192 1 in the separation and shipment of edible portions of 

 fish, followed in 1924 by quick freezing and shortly thereafter (1925) by 

 unit packaging of not only frozen fish (which could not stand alone in the 

 market), but also (1927) of fruits, vegetables, poultry, meats, berries, etc. 

 Soon followed the installation of refrigerated dispensing cabinets (1930), 

 making possible the marketing of unit-packaged frozen perishables, and 

 therefore the widespread expansion of retail distribution and finally (1940) 

 domestic "deep freeze" storage cabinets; and lately (1946) pre-cooked com- 

 plete meals in frozen form. The prospect for the next improvement is air 

 transport for the more expensive products."^ These developments have 

 greatly facilitated and are facilitating the mass distribution of fish (as well 

 as other perishables) by the great chain store organizations and thousands 

 of other retail food stores, and have presented fish to consumers to whom 

 it had been theretofore inaccessible. Fishery statistics of the region (New 

 England) where these improvements originated and reached their highest 

 development clearly reflect the benefits in a growth considerably exceeding 



25. See Larson, Reitz and Burgum (1948). 



