288 SEA FISHERIES 



expenses. He cannot exist under such conditions as 

 these. 



The manufacturers, on their side, are at grips with 

 their solderers or packers. If the catch is poor they 

 dismiss them ; if it is too heavy they talk of installing 

 machinery to close and solder the boxes. In either case 

 trouble is inevitable. Consider the strike of the solderers 

 at Concarneau in July, 1909. It was only under the 

 protection of troops that the manufacturers were able 

 to install machinery in some of the factories. 



" The solderers/' wrote M. Perard, " then tried to win 

 over the fishermen, endeavouring to make them promise 

 that they would refuse to deliver fish at any factory in 

 which the machines were installed." "If we are beaten 

 to-day/' said the solderers, " you fishermen will be beaten 

 to-morrow." The fishermen, in order to keep up the 

 prices and avoid glutting the market, decided "at a 

 public meeting not to put to sea more than once a day 

 and to remain ashore on Sundays." The manufacturers 

 begged them not to carry out their proposal ; but the 

 fishermen, considering themselves aggrieved, joined the 

 solderers and pillaged the factories. Such conflicts are 

 bad for everyone : the fishermen and solderers, who, 

 whatever they may do, will sooner or later be conquered 

 by machinery, are thrown out of work, and the manu- 

 facturers are unable to compete with their Spanish, 

 Portuguese, Norwegian, and Japanese rivals. 



As we see, the sardine problem is too complicated for 

 haphazard solution. To limit the number of fish thrown 

 on the market does not affect the fundamental facts. 

 The only solution lies in regularising production, and 

 this is impossible without a radical alteration of the 

 methods of fishery employed. The Breton fishermen, 

 like the Danes and the Arcachonese, must replace their 



