120 ALONGSHORE »« 



must have cost him at least a pound. Plenty of 

 such evidence can be collected among longshore- 

 men, but unfortunately without documentary 

 proof. 



Remedies are not easy to devise, at all events 

 before the extent of the corruption of the markets 

 and of the wastage through defective organization 

 has been accurately ascertained. For the channels 

 through which the fish goes on its way from long- 

 shoreman to consumer are both badly organized 

 and wasteful. The fisherman is obliged to play 

 into the middleman's hands. Three winters ago, 

 when almost the only smooth water round Great 

 Britain was off the South Devon coast, where we 

 were catching plenty of herrings, the price at St. 

 Ives rose to 96s. a thousand. Yet we had no 

 means of knowing it in time, and we never 

 obtained more than 42s., and that only for one 

 night's haul. The chief difficulty in the way of 

 better organization is the extreme irregularity of 

 supplies from longshore fisheries. But that diffi- 

 culty ought not to be insurmountable in these 

 days of telegraphs, telephones, and rapid (if not 

 cheap) transit. Before their reduction in numbers, 

 the coastguards used unofficially to telephone along 

 the coast for fishermen. Information as to markets 



