Living Silver 



that might run into one hundred and fifty thousand. They didn't 

 build ships. They didn't invest capital. Yet they felt decidedly 

 miserable because they received no interest on a non-existent in- 

 vestment. And, in many cases, it was literally non-existent. Thanks 

 to depreciation there w^ere many vessels that stood on their com- 

 pany's books at zero. The ow^ners w^ere thus able to save, even on 

 insurance. The w^hole fleet w^as being drained of capital. That 

 was why the profits were so low. 



But capital alone could never have corrected the abuses Jan 

 found on every side. Day after day, ships sailed in search of the 

 same fish, the fish that would sell. Sooner or later the stocks of 

 these species were going to be exhausted, for it was not only the 

 British fleet that hunted them. All Europe was also engaged in 

 the same chase. There must have been more than a thousand ships 

 scratching the bottom of the North Sea. 



And why did these fish sell ? Why were lemon sole more valu- 

 able than mackerel? Why did the catfish fetch less than plaice? 

 What made the halibut so expensive while the sea bream, on 

 which it fed, was almost unsaleable? No matter how often he 

 asked himself these questions, he always ended up with the same 

 tautological answer: fish sold because somebody bought them. 

 There was no other conceivable reason. It had nothing to do with 

 good fish selling and bad ones becoming unsaleable. Indeed the 

 fishermen, who probably knew more about the food qualities of 

 fish than anybody else, often kept precisely those species that the 

 public refused. They could be seen, sidling off from the market, 

 carrying a catfish 'fry' home, when they could have chosen sole or 

 haddock, plaice or whiting. And, especially when they were at 

 sea, they ate the small ones too, the tiny plaice and haddock, just 

 large enough to land, small fish that the merchants were able to 

 buy for a song. The trawlermen swore that they were sweeter. 

 Who was going to contradict these fishermen? 



A dietician, perhaps? But the dieticians did not. They rather 

 tended to agree with the men who did the catching and who ate 

 fish on almost every day of their lives. They too said that the cat- 



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