107 



PEIVATE ENTERPRISE. 



225. Fresh fish trade. — Tlie above suggestions are intended for 

 Government work only, aud presuppose that private enterprise will 

 wait on Government experiment, seeing that there is no sign of new 

 activity amongst those interested in the industry as merchants or 

 employers of labour, while the fishermen themselves are obviously not 

 in a position to make new departures of any importance. Yet as in 

 Japan there are many opportunities both in large and small enterprise ; 

 e.g., the new Salt rules for duty-free salt taken to sea should encourage 

 local merchants in the building of boats of an improved Ratnagiri 

 pattern, or in hiring Eatnagiri boats, to keep the sea for some days 

 cleaning and salting their catches on board preparatory to curing on 

 shore ; there are many merchants who could, singly or in syndicate, 

 arrange this. Then the introduction of the better treatment of fish 

 when caught and especially the keeping of live fish in cages, chests, or 

 wells, is a matter requiring little except thought and arrangement. 

 The introduction of a motor or steam carrier, of no great size but 

 of some speed, would enable fish alive or recently dead to be brought 

 in at any time and with the least possible delay either for transport 

 inland as fresh fish, or to the curing-yard without the delay which is 

 now so often fatal ; the use of ice on such a carrier is possible, and 

 there is already an ice factory at Calicut which could be utilized and 

 the prices of which could be lowered if there were a better demand ; 

 such a carrier would begin an organized inland fresh fish trade which 

 the railways are believed to be ready to meet by the provision, if 

 sufficient traffic is guaranteed, of cold storage or even of special 

 refrigerating cars or motor vehicles. 



226. To anticipate an item of my East Coast Report : the Madras 

 City fish market is poorly supplied with fresh fish, poorly, that is, 

 compared with the actual and still more with the potential demand ; 

 at present much of the evening fish is caught at places such as Pulicat 

 and brought to shore in the morning by 9 or 10 a.m. ; it is then trans- 

 ferred to kavadis and so to light open boats on the Buckingham Canal 

 which are then towed by men to Ennore ; here they are again transferred 

 to jutkas which bring the fish to Madras by 3 or 4 p.m., the fish having 

 been dead and exposed to sun and heat for some six hours. There 

 must be enough enterprise and capital and organizing power in Madras 

 to put on a proper footing the fresh fish trade of a city of half a million 

 people with thousands of well-to-do persons ready to buy fish almost 

 daily at prices which would well remunerate liberally spent capital : 

 better and larger boats and nets and lines, for drifting, trawling and 

 long-lining, used further out at sea where the fish are less disturbed 

 by the frequent passage of great steamers with their noisy propellers 

 or by the incessant catamaran ; provision thereon for live storage ; the 

 rapid carrier; the ice factory ; these combined should do much for the 

 Madras fish supply : even a small motor boat on the canal with proper 



