72 A History of the American Whale Fishery. 
year. Thus for several years, just in the height of whaling 
prosperity, the average annual price of bone was less than 
40 cents per pound. In 1891 it touched $5.38, and 
in 1904, $5.80, per pound, the latter being the highest 
annual average ever recorded. In 1905, the average 
price was $4.90 per pound. Often during recent years 
only the bone has been saved, the remainder of the carcass 
being cast adrift if other whales are in sight,® because 
the bone is so much more valuable than the oil. It 
seems almost unquestionable that with the low prices 
and limited demand for oil the whale fishery would cease 
entirely but for the more valuable whale bone. 
Practically no other industry in the country can present 
any parallel to the revolution that the whale fishery has 
undergone in the space of sixty years. From a business 
representing an invested capital of tens of millions of 
dollars, and giving employment to tens of thousands of 
men, it has fallen to a place where whaling is no longer 
of any great importance even to the communities from 
which it is carried on. In fact whaling is kept alive at 
all only by the demand for a product which a century 
ago was regarded as hardly worth saving. To work such 
changes in a once great industry powerful factors have 
been at work, undermining from all sides the foundation 
on which whaling prosperity rested. 
One of the most potent causes working toward the 
downfall of whaling is found in the nature of the industry 
itself—the uncertainty of the business. It would be 
hard to find any other business, employing so much 
capital, where the uncertainty of profitable returns is so 
great as has always been the case with the whale fishery. 
One year, may bring successful voyages and good profits, 
only to be offset the next year by heavy losses of life, 
money and property. This has been especially true since 
the opening of the Arctic fishery in 1848. ‘To illustrate 
6 Fish Comm. Rep., 1893, p. 202. 
