612 REPORT OF COMMISSIONER OF FISH AND FISHERIES. 

 5. The mannfacture of sardines from menhaden. 

 (Paragraph 189, p. 137.) 



The New York Times, April 12, 1874, has the following account of 

 the Port Monmouth factory : 



" The scene at the fishing grounds off Sandy Hook at the height of 

 the season is picturesque in the extreme. The day is usually a bright 

 one, with just enough breeze to render the heat bearable and toss up 

 the small white caps of the waves for the sunlight to sparkle on. The 

 fishermen in their jaunty little ten-ton sloops have been lying off the 

 ' grounds ' since midnight. In the dim light of the early dawn the 

 ' school ' is descried approaching against the wind. The menhaden 

 swims on the surface, and the serried ripijles of myriads of fins cover 

 the broad expanse for thousands of feet in every direction. The small 

 boats are lowered, the long net, over 7,000 feet in length, and reaching 

 12 or 13 into the water, is carried out on both sides until the hapless 

 fish are inclosed in a vast semicircle, through the meshy walls of which 

 there is no escape, and from which they are ladled in thousands by the 

 fishermen armed with small nets or ' scoops,' holding a peck apiece. 

 The silly victims never think of escaping by swimming beneath the 

 lower edge of the net, a few feet below the surface. The victims are 

 then loaded on the sloops, which make sail as rapidly as possible for the 

 factory dock at Port Monmouth. During rough or unusually breezy 

 weather the general effect is greatly heightened. The flapping sails, 

 careening boats, and spray-drenched fishermen, hauling on the seine 

 with redoubled exertions in order to get in their catch before the wind 

 freshens into a gale, forms a picture exhilarating even to old hands at 

 the business. At the landing the fleet are greeted by the 180 employes 

 in the factory, and the entire catch, often reaching a thousand bushels, 

 is rapidly transferred to the shore. Then begins the more prosaic part 

 of the process. The fish to be cured are selected from the catch, the 

 medium-sized ones being preferred, their heads itails, and entrails re- 

 moved by a new machine, the exclusive property of the company, and 

 their bodies transferred to the ' scalers.' Only from a half to a fifth ot 

 the original haul is used, two hundred bushels being the ordinary amount 

 handled daily. These the ' scalers ' seize and submit to the scraping- 

 machine, a series of revolving curry-combs arranged on four lines of 

 shafting 50 feet long, which frees each fish of its scales in the space of 

 about a second and a half. As seventy or eighty men ace at work, 

 straining every nerve to get the 'catch' into the salt before the heat 

 of the day, the rapidity with which the finny game are put through the 

 various details is something startling. The 'cleaners' are long oval 

 troughs of running water, over which revolves a series of brushes, 

 something after the pattern of the 'scaler,' and which does all that its 

 name implies in an almost equally short space of time. From this the 

 fish go into the salting barrels, a stage of the work at which the men 



