THE OCEAN AS A SOURCE OF FOOD SUPPLY 173 



say that not one ten-millionth part is utilized for the 

 food of man, despite the fact of the difficulty of feed- 

 ing sufficiently the toiling millions of workers upon 

 nourishing and palatable food. With the advance of 

 science, new methods of food-preserving have attained 

 to such perfection that it is not too much to hope that 

 before long more attention will be paid to the harvest 

 of the sea, in order that it may be delivered to inland 

 populations without being rendered tasteless and even 

 detrimental to health by being over impregnated with 

 salt, an effete and barbarous method of preserving food, 

 which will surely disappear with the spread of know- 

 ledge. Even now it is a well-known fact that our 

 splendid floating hotels carry with them from home 

 sufficient fresh fish of the most valuable kinds, such 

 as salmon, trout, turbot, and lobsters, to provide dainty 

 dishes for their passengers throughout the whole of 

 the voyage. It only needs an extension of this 

 principle to the land for inland peoples to be fed on 

 fresh fish at reasonable rates which shall yet yield 

 large profits on the capital employed. There is really 

 no more difficulty in doing this than that which has 

 been so successfully overcome in America in the matter 

 of fresh meat. The great butchers of Chicago have 

 practically eliminated the butcher's shop. Their 

 travellers pervade the country, taking orders for meat, 

 which is sent to their demand in refrigerator-boxes, 

 stowed in refrigerating-cars, so that remote hamlets, 

 thousands of miles away, get their fresh joints from 

 the great stockyards controlled by such giants of com- 

 merce as Armour, Swift, and Cudahy. With the 

 "Trust" methods of these leviathans I have here 

 nothing to do ; I hate them, and feel that they should 



