32 PACIFIC COD FISHERIES. 
an interest in the firm and, being of a more thrifty disposition and not in- 
terested in the mining, he was enabled to retire with enough to permit him to 
take a well-earned rest. 
These epitaphs of those who have dropped into the business and then dropped 
out run in schools. Their course is something like this: The bright sun of pros- 
perity shines for a season or two upon the regular stand-bys in the business 
and it looks very attractive and inviting to some chaps with an old vessel or a 
little spare money. So they jump in and for a time cut a brilliant dash in the 
business. So bright are they that the sun of prosperity is all in eclipse*and 
everyone in the trade walks in shadow. When they get tired of this or broke 
they drop out, and those who are left pick up the scattered ends of the trade, 
struggle out into the light again, and by and by there is some more prosperity 
and then a new crop of hopeful investors appears, and so on and on.@ 
One of the most picturesque figures in the industry, and one who 
cut a wide swath while in it, was Edward Pond. Beginning in 1902, 
with apparently no end of money, he sent two vessels to Bering 
Sea. In 1905 his fleet had increased to three vessels, two of which 
fished in the Okhotsk and one in the Bering Sea. Prices for fish 
were low in 1906 and 1907, and when the two vessels he had sent to 
the Okhotsk Sea in the latter year returned virtually empty, hav- 
ing been driven from the sea by the Russian authorities, he was 
forced to the wall, and his stock of fish on hand and to arrive was 
taken over by the Union Fish Co. 
In 1905 the Pacific States Trading Co. was organized at San 
Francisco. A home-curing station was built on Carquinez Strait, 
about 30 miles from San Francisco, and named Woodside Glen. 
The schooners Glen (121 tons) and John F. Miller (170 tons) were 
sent to Bering Sea. The company also built several shore stations 
in Alaska, as noted elsewhere. Later the company added the 
schooners Ottillie Fjord (247 tons) and the Dora Bluhm (315 tons) 
to its fishing fleet. On September 30, 1907, the schooner Glen was 
lost on Unimak Island, with the loss of one life. While the 
schooner John F. Miller was engaged in an attempt to salve the 
wrecked schooner a gale suddenly sprang up on January 8, 1908, 
and she was also driven ashore, 10 of her crew losing their lives. 
This disaster to two of its fleet, together with a heavy overproduc- 
tion in 1908 causing a slump in the market, compelled the company 
to cease operations for a season or two. In 1909 the company’s 
schooner Ottillie Fjord was outfitted and sent north by the Union 
Fish Co. In 1910 all operations were suspended, but in 1911 the 
company resumed operations at its shore station in Northwest Har- 
bor, and also outfitted and sent north the schooner O¢étillie Fjord, 
and operated continuously until early in 1916, when the company 
finally abandoned the business. 
«Pioneers in the Pacific Coast Codfish Industry, by C. P. Overton. Pacific Fisherman 
Annual, 1906, p. 70, 71, and 75. 
