150 REPORT OF THE COMMISSIONER OF FISHERIES. 
but many improvements have been made in retorts, greatly facilitat- 
ing the cooking of salmon, and the machinery for manufacturing can 
bodies and tops has also undergone a change. 
When the industry was in its infancy a pak of 150 or 200 cases was 
considered a good day’s work. Now it is not an uncommon occurrence 
for a cannery to turn out from 1,500 to 2,000 cases in a day, and there 
are several canneries that have even a greater capacity. The daily 
average for an Alaska cannery is from 800 to 1,000 cases for one filler, 
and nearly double that amount for two. <A few establishments have 
three fillers, and one in the Bristol Bay region has six, but it is sel- 
dom that this number of machines is kept in operation at one time. 
A pack of 1,000 cases a day requires a complete modern equipment 
and the work of only skilled hands. In the early days of the industry 
most of the men employed were inexperienced, and much confusion, 
as well as considerable waste of material, was consequently occasioned. 
Now, however, 2 a large portion of the men are employed season after 
season, in one cannery or another, and ina well-organized establish- 
ment ane same men are engaged in the same kind of work each year, 
thus becoming expert in thelr particular lines 
There are a few canneries that have not a pace with the times in 
the way of machinery, and still adhere to methods long discarded by 
the modern plants. This lack of Improvement is ices due to the 
want of capital, and also to the value of the stream where the can- 
neries are situated. An establishment located at the mouth of a bay 
or river which will yield not over 20,000 or 25,000 cases of salmon at 
most in a season is under an expense too great to permit an outlay 
such as would be required to place it on an equal footing with others 
more favorably situated. Itis not to be inferred, however, that the 
canneries less fully supplied with labor-saving machines do not put up 
as fine a quality of salmon as those more fully equipped; the quality 
and commercial value of the packs are about the same, the only differ- 
ence being that the result is attained by a slight v eee in method. 
From the time a salmon is landed upon the wharf. until cased and 
ready for shipment, it is handled about twenty-four times. To watch 
the rapid steps of the process is most interesting, particularly if the 
old and new methods of packing be compared. 
Handling the salmon.—Scows, boats, large dories, and steamers are 
used in landing the catch. F ene the “fish were pitched by hand 
into bins near the dressing tables on the wharf when the tide was out, 
but this laborious method has been largely superseded by the use of 
an elevator built at the end of the wharf and reaching the water’s edge 
at a slant, to be lowered or raised according to the stage of the tide. 
The fish are caught up by the elevator, and on reaching the top are 
run into the building by means of chutes leading to the various bins. 
At a number of canneries tracks have been laid on a slip cut through 
