THEIR ROUND OF LIFE AND LABOUR. 21 
a large fishing—“a glut of herrings ’’—active gutters are at 
a premium, whilst the wages paid for the work are increased ; 
an expert party of six women will make up over one 
hundred and thirty barrels in a long day. 
It may be as well, before going farther, to state more 
definitely than has been done the figures pertaining to the 
herring fishery, so far as wages and allowances are con- 
cerned. Premising that the terms agreed upon may not 
be alike in any two places, it may here be chronicled, that 
agreements at the rate of a pound per cran for the tale of 
two hundred crans with a bounty of perhaps thirty or forty 
pounds, and in some instances fifty pounds, have this season 
(1883) been entered into ; various perquisites of the kind 
already indicated being also included in the bargain. Many 
of the hired men now prefer to share in the luck of the 
fishery and take their chance of payment at a certain rate 
per cran rather than accept fixed wages : say one shilling, 
or two shillings per cran, as the case may be, as also a 
fixed sum by way of bounty, as well as other advantages of 
various kinds. The terms made by the hired men depend, 
of course, a good. deal on the state of the labour market ; 
when a new centre of herring fishing industry arises, or an 
old one develops itself, as is the case in Shetland, both 
men and women flock to it in the hope of obtaining better 
terms than would be offered them at older established 
fisheries. These men are now much better-paid than they 
used to be some thirty years ago, when, for the whole period 
of “the fishing,” a five-pound note would perhaps be their 
utmost reward. These “hired men,” it should be stated, 
are many of them mere labourers, and not expert fishers— 
they are a mixture of the small farmer, the village 
mechanic, and the sailor, glad enough to turn out in the 
herring season, the best that can be said of most of them 
