THE PROFIT 273 



but personally I think they should never exceed that size. 

 Moreover, very large vessels should always work in distant 

 and excessively abundant waters. 



IV 



We must not consider boats and gear and forget 

 the men who work them. This last paragraph will 

 deal with the profits of the fishermen, which must be 

 expressed in terms of the total yield of the principal 

 fishing-grounds. 



The number of sea-going fishermen in France is about 

 100,000. Great Britain possesses about the same number. 

 There is also, in France, a population of some 60,000 

 ashore men, women, and children actively engaged in 

 the fishing industry. If we take the average figures of 

 the season's fishery in France namely, 191,600 tons of 

 fish and .4,400,000 we find that each fisherman is 

 responsible for an average of 2 tons of fish, each ton 

 being worth about 22 i6s. The profit per man, in 

 round figures, is .46. The English fisherman produces 

 considerably more. The total average catch amounts to 

 958,000 tons, worth ^10,120,000. In other words, the 

 English fisherman is responsible for an average annual 

 catch of 9-58 tons of fish, each ton being worth about 

 10 us. 2jd., so that the yield per man is roughly ^101 

 per annum. In other words, the British fisherman 

 catches nearly five times as much as the French fisher- 

 man, and, although he sells it at less than half the price, 

 he gains more than twice as much as the French fisher- 

 man. As, like all industries and all branches of organised 

 commerce, fishery is one of the forms of the universal 

 striving for gold to assure the worker of food and drink, 

 we may assert that the economic inferiority of the French 

 fisherman arises from the defective organisation of the 



18 



