PACIFIC SALMON FISHERIES. 99 
per case, that the stipulated price had been paid him, and if he failed 
to settle with the men it was no concern of the canner. 
The contractor, under his agreement with the canner, has the right 
to feed his employees from the ime they leave the home port until 
they return, and this is a most prolific source of profit and graft 
to him and of trouble to the canner. When the workers comprise 
orientals alone, the food question rarely troubles as then rice, which 
is the staple food and is also as a rule quite cheap, meets with 
the approval of all. But since the gangs now comprise almost as 
many nonorientals as there are orientals, and the former find it im- 
possible to exist, let alone thrive, on rice, much trouble results when 
the contractor furnishes them with an undue proportion of the latter 
in the daily menu. As aresult of this condition of affairs, some of the 
more far-seeing companies now compel the contractor to furnish each 
nationality with food to which they are accustomed and in sufficient 
quantities. Eternal vigilance is Comte in this matter, however, 
as the wily oriental is alw: ays seeking an opportunity to increase his 
profits by cutting the quantity of food to the minimum and by forcing 
as much rice as “possible upon the employees Innumerable strikes 
in the canneries can be traced directly to dissatisfaction with the 
quantity, kind, and quality of food furnished to the men by the 
contractor’s agent; and the resulting losses, which are sometimes very 
large, as the strikes generally occur when the cannery has plenty of 
fish, fall upon the cannery men. 
Nearly all of the workers are ignorant men; in most cases they have 
but little knowledge of English, the language i in which the contract 
is printed, and as no paternal Government watches over them to see 
that they understand thoroughly the terms of the contract and that 
it is fulfilled on the part of the employer, as is done in the case of the 
sailors and fishermen, some of them discover at the end of the season 
that their pay does not come up to the glowing promises of the agent 
who recruited them and also frequently discover that there are various 
fines provided for in the contract, which, while they do not work an 
injustice when the contractor is honest, yet in the hands of an unscru- 
pulous and grasping contractor, frequently operate to the financial 
disadvantage of the worker. 
Some of the dishonest contractors have developed other metheds 
for fleecing their employees. Sometimes they will furnish to their 
contract workers, either directly or through some concern in which 
they have financial interests or which will pay them a commission, an 
outfit comprising clothing, blankets, shoes, ete., at a price two or 
three hundred times its real value. The worst feature of many of 
these outfits is that they are woefully inadequate for use in the 
climate to which the cannery ship is bound. Some unscrupulous 
contractors also sell goods to the workers at extortionate prices while 
at the cannery The latter is usually not permitted by the canners, 
who generally operate a store of their own where the men can as a rule 
obtain goods as cheap as they can be bought in either San Francisco 
or Seattle. 
Orientals are inveterate gamblers, and there are usually several 
sharpers with each cannery gang, generally with the connivance of 
the contractor’s agent—although it is usually an impossibility to 
prove this legally—and they inveigle the green hands into all sorts of 
gambling games, and in this manner frequently succeed in winning 
