382 MARINE FISHERIES OF NORTH CAROLINA 



of the average of all United States food fish be exchanged for as much of 

 either all commodities or all foods as it could before 1908, except for a brief 

 period in 1922 to 1924 when they barely reached the earlier level; for 

 the whole period 1921-1940, the ratio of the all fish price index to either 

 the all-commodity or all-food index of the Bureau of Labor Statistics was 

 off by 25 to 30 per cent from what it had been on the average for the period 

 1887-1908. The average price of food fish in terms of purchasing power for all 

 commodities or for all foods had decreased both in the whole United States 

 and in the Atlantic-Gulf regions separately. 



It is true that the requirements of the expanding population have been 

 met in part by the opening and expansion of new Pacific and Alaskan fish- 

 eries; however, the production of the New England vessel fisheries has 

 kept up with the growth of population at a slightly lower exchange price, 

 and the Atlantic-Gulf regions as a whole, while not quite keeping up, have 

 produced a substantially increased quantity of food fishery products and 

 sold it at a lower price per pound relative to all commodities and all foods. 



Deviations in Production from Year to Year. One might expect to find 

 the total product of the fisheries highly variable from year to year, since 

 the many fisheries are affected by such uncertainties as the weather, "red 

 tides" and other submarine catastrophes, unpredictable migrations, and 

 fluctuations of abundance of the fishes, and since they produce so many 

 kinds of fishes from such a vast coast line without interchange of information 

 or any form of control. On the contrary, the total production of all food 

 fish of the entire country is represented by a relatively smooth curve (some- 

 what over-smoothed during the period of sparse field canvasses) from 1887 

 to 1908; but even in the more frequently canvassed period after 192 1 it 

 moves without sharp zig-zags from year to year, in accordance with definite 

 trends over periods of years, to 1940. It appears that whatever may be the 

 fluctuations in particular fisheries, localities, and regions, they compensate 

 and accommodate themselves to one another or cancel one another out, 

 in such way that the sum of the products of all the fisheries is a total which, 

 while not constant, moves from year to year in accordance with some 

 definite trend, regardless of what any particular fishery may do. This is an 

 example of large-scale order resting on small-scale disorder, which is familiar 

 in insurance and many other statistical phenomena. 



The Trend of Volume of Fish Production. The trend of total production 

 of the food fisheries, as a unit, follows an economic rather than biological 

 pattern of behavior. The pattern of the economic cycle of prosperity and 

 depression is expressed in many statistical series, such as those of national 

 income, volume of production of numerous industries, or of all industry; 

 wholesale, retail, and foreign trade, sales by mail order houses, employment, 

 bank debits, stock and bond prices, sales of postage stamps, sales of life 



