THE SMOKED-HERRING INDUSTRY. 485 



produces all the smoked herring put up in this country. These statistics prove that only 307,300 

 boxes of hard herring were put up within the limits of the State during that year, over half of 

 which were shipped directly to New York, while considerable quantities were sent elsewhere, leav- 

 ing Boston a very much smaller quantity than is reported. The apparent discrepancy is easily 

 explained when we remember that Eastport is located in the very center of the herring district, 

 and that the dealers purchase annually many thousand boxes of fish directly from the New Bruns- 

 wick fishermen. Besides this, many of the foreign fishermen land their fish at Eastport, where 

 they are taken in charge by the steamboat officials, who treat them as domestic products. Others 

 still ship their fish direct by the trading vessels of the locality that always find it convenient to 

 clear from an American port, the fish carried by them being naturally considered as domestic prod- 

 ucts, though they may never have touched our territory until landed in Boston. Eastport is thus 

 very naturally credited with all the herring received from the Passamaquoddy region, while 

 actually producing only a small portion of them, the bulk, as has been said, being put up on the ad- 

 jacent islands belonging to the Province of New Brunswick. In 1879, according to the New 

 Brunswick Fishery Report, ninety-nine weirs were fished, 74,260 barrels of herring were pickled, 

 and 683,530 boxes were smoked in the district tributary to Eastport, which includes the coast and 

 islands lying between Beaver Harbor, New Brunswick, and the coast of Maine. A majority of these 

 are sent to the United States, and are credited in the market reports as American fish. It is an easy 

 matter to get from the herring smokers of New England the statistics of their business ; but a trade 

 has recently sprung up in smoked herring prepared from frozen fish after they have reached the 

 markets of consumption. Of this business no exact statistics are obtainable, and the quantity 

 prepared in this way can only be estimated. It seems that during the winter months when any 

 market happens to be glutted with frozen herring, parties are in the habit of purchasing them at 

 a low figure, and, after thawing, salting, and smoking them, place them upon the market. There 

 is no regular business in this line, as the smokers engage in the work only when the price is pecu- 

 liarly low, wholly neglecting the business when fish are scarce. Fish are prepared in this way in 

 most of the larger sea-port towns and also in many of the principal cities of the interior, where 

 one would scarcely expect it. Even in Washington, D. C., the business is carried on to a consid- 

 erable extent, and in 1880, according to Mr. Gwynn Harris, city market inspector, the fish dealers 

 of that city smoked 45,000 herring which they received from the north in a frozen state. The fish 

 are also smoked to a limited extent by the retail dealers, who thus utilize any surplus that might 

 otherwise spoil. Frozen fish, however, make an inferior quality of smoked herring, as the fiber of 

 the flesh is injured, rendering it brittle and giving the herring a dull, bluish color along the back. 

 These herring are much larger than the ordinary smoked herring, and, owing to a lack of suitable 

 smoke-houses, they are only partially cured, thus resembling more nearly the bloater than the hard 

 herring of Maine. 



The smoking of hard herring proper is, as has been said, confined wholly to Maine, the fishery 

 census returns of New Hampshire and Massachusetts failing to mention any products from either 

 of these States. A careful investigation of this branch of the fisheries for Maine shows that there 

 were, in 1880, 202 smoke-houses, valued at $33,700, and that 229 persons, exclusive of the weir- 

 fishermen, were engaged in preparing 307,300 boxes of bard herring (in addition to 51,700 of 

 bloaters), valued at $55,320. A detailed table of these facts will be found on page 488. 



To form a correct impression of the smoked-herring business, it would be necessary to include 

 those made from frozen herring, which may be as well considered here as with the bloaters ; esti- 

 mating these at 75,000 boxes, which is probably not far from the actual quantity produced, we 

 have a total of 383,000, valued at $68,320 (exclusive of bloaters), put up in the United States. 



