INTKODUCTOEY. 15 



be the case. They may not be worse off than they were 

 twenty years ago, as some of them tliink when they 

 consider the higher prices they have to pay now for 

 everything belonging to their fit out, for they iniques- 

 tionably get a larger money return for their labour ; 

 but the fact must not be lost sight of that the j)ersons 

 who are actually engaged in catching the fish, and who 

 often have to contend with difficulties, dangers, and 

 losses of which the buyer is content to remain in real 

 or assumed ignorance, are not the men who receive the 

 largest share of the money for which the fish is ulti- 

 mately sold to the consumer. The sale of fish is now 

 organized into a regular trade; the wholesale dealers 

 have agents in all directions ; transport and even tele- 

 graph charges are heavy items in the salesman's ex- 

 penses ; and each person through whose hands the fish 

 passes adds his percentage to the cost, until at last when 

 it comes to the consumer, the price charged is frequently 

 three or four times as much as the fishermen received 

 for it. In London the West End fishmongers are the 

 persons who manage to secure by far the largest pro- 

 portion of profit from every fish which comes into their 

 hands. 



We will take the case of the trawlers, a class of fish- 

 ermen which supplies, with the exception of cod, almost 

 the whole of the most expensive and favourite kinds of 

 fish brought to table. Trawled fish is divided for market 

 purposes into two classes, distinguished by the names of 

 "prime" and "offal"; the former consisting of turbot, 

 brill, soles, and doreys, and the latter of plaice, had- 

 docks, and other kinds of inferior fish, for which, many 

 years ago, the demand did not nearly keep pace with 

 the supply. 



From the following abstract of a statement^ fur- 



' For details, sec Trawling, page 88, 



